


From Russia, With Love

by Grindylowe



Category: Lackadaisy
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-01-18
Updated: 2014-08-20
Packaged: 2017-10-29 17:42:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 22
Words: 81,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/322464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Grindylowe/pseuds/Grindylowe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Marigold makes a partnership that takes the speakeasy into uncharted waters, it's up to Mordecai to keep them all afloat - while navigating uncharted waters of his own</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Test Drive

**Author's Note:**

> It strikes me that in A Good Man I gave Mordecai's humanity a little too much credit. That was years ago, and now I think (I hope) I have a little more insight into who - and what - he is. Drooling fangirl as I am I'd still love to see him in a romantic situation, but I am aware given his … temperament … that is highly unlikely - at least by any conventional means. That said, a potential Mordecai romance is far too enticing a subject to put easily aside. I want one to happen - but how could it?
> 
> This story is my attempt to answer that question.
> 
> ( And even if I'm way off it was a lot of fun to write.)
> 
> Enjoy.

_Oh hello. If you've seen this story before you might be surprised to see this here, and rated T. I punched it up, changed some scenes, and generally made the bad stuff good and the good stuff better. Made Mordecai just a touch more Mordecai, and I have a better handle on Innochka's character now. Despite the rate-down it will still have sexual content, however it won't be unclassy / uncreative / raunchy enough to warrant an M rating._

_It will be beautiful, dammit. If not I will slap it back up to an M, but it will be._

_If you're new to the story, enjoy. Yes there is a prominent OC. If that's not for you fair enough and thanks for visiting, but I bet if you give her a chance you'll like her. If you're coming back, thank you, and I hope you like reading the updated version._

_-Grindylowe 4/4/2014_

_It strikes me that in A Good Man I gave Mordecai's humanity a little too much credit. That was years ago, and now I think (I hope) I have a little more insight into who - and what - he is. Drooling fangirl as I am I'd still love to see him in a romantic situation, but I am aware given his … temperament … that is highly unlikely - at least by any conventional means. That said, a potential Mordecai romance is far too enticing a subject to put easily aside. I want one to happen - but how could it?_

_This story is my attempt to answer that question._

_And even if I'm way off it was a lot of fun to write._

_Enjoy._

_-Grindylowe 2011_

**From Russia With Love**

**Chapter One: Test Drive**

Mordecai Heller wasn't exactly sure when Asa Sweet's employer decided to thrust Marigold into artifact smuggling alongside bootlegging. He was the last to hear of the new venture.

"I don't like filling you in on mere speculation," Sweet said, picking the ice out of his drink and chewing it in a way that made Mordecai's skin crawl. "It only makes you anxious."

Statements like that always threw Mordecai for a loop. How could Sweet, or anyone for that matter, tell him what he felt before he himself knew? That crumbling in the chest that made him short of breath, was that anxiety? All the time his body felt things his mind could not analyze. He long ago understood that these sensations were  _emotions_ , but never quite grasped how someone could name something happening in his body before he could. It was, he supposed, part of the thing he was missing that most people had -  _empathy_ , they said.

That word was just a word.

Mordecai could look at a person, stare, study him, and have no more clue what was going on in that person's chest than he knew the contents of a sealed crate. It was a lack that served him well in his work, at least according to Atlas, who said as much one evening when Mordecai came to him seeking an answer to a riddle. Well, not a riddle so much as a statement around which Mordecai built a riddle. Something a job shrieked that stuck to Mordecai before Mordecai stuck an icepick to the job.

"You're a monster!" the job screamed. "You're a monster!"

"Am I a monster?" Mordecai later asked Atlas.

He wasn't so much offended as puzzled by the accusation. He didn't feel like a monster. He was merely able to do things that other people hadn't the will to do. He had no particular feeling about these deeds others deemed distasteful - they didn't plague him but he took no pleasure in them. Did that make him a monster?

Atlas considered this. Mordecai always appreciated this about Atlas. The man took his odd questions in stride in a way no one else did, not even Viktor. He learned long ago to stop inquiring to anyone about the incomprehensible oddities of human behavior save a very few people. Most people looked at him as if he'd grown two heads. These concepts Mordecai could not grasp were as obvious to them as water to a fish.

Atlas lit a cigar but didn't answer. Why hadn't he answered? Perhaps he'd forgotten the question?

"Am I a monster?" Mordecai repeated.

"I'm thinking," Atlas replied, puffing.

"Oh," Mordecai said softly. "Sorry."

Atlas nodded once and puffed on his pipe. After a moment he spoke.

"My boy, you're … you're a thing nature created to do a certain job in this world. You're here to thin the herd. And you do it well! You have a gift."

"A gift?" Mordecai replied. "I inferred it was a lack."

"The lack is the gift. The thing you lack … it's a burden. It's a burden most of us carry but you do not, and you are stronger for it. You see?"

"Not entirely."

"It gives you the power to do what others cannot bear. It makes you - have you read any Nietzsche?"

"An Ubermensch?"

"There's a clever boy, an Ubermensch, exactly."

"I don't think I can be both an Ubermensch and a monster," Mordecai said carefully.

"Ubermensch, monster - same thing. It's a difficult truth most don't understand but you live every day. Congratulations, Mordecai, you're the impartial blade on which nature cuts the wheat from the chaff. If nature made you a monster, well, it made you an elegant one."

_Elegant-_  he liked that word. It was something he strove to be, elegant.

An elegant monster.

**ooo**

The new smuggling operation was stupid and he did not approve. It was a bad time to extend business - Marigold had enough heat without any new undertakings. Nevertheless Sweet's word was God's and the plan rolled out, regardless of Mordecai's feelings on the matter.

"You ready to meet the Russians?" Sweet asked, slipping his gun into a holster hidden under his jacket.

Mordecai gave a curt nod. The Russians were the mob doing the smuggling. They would, at some point, put the artifacts on a boat headed for the Gulf of Mexico, from which they were destined for South America.

The operation was well funded. They were willing to pay what Mordecai could only assume was top dollar for Marigold's insight into St. Louis, a vulnerable transfer point. Marigold were to act as "fixers" - they were to arrange the meeting, arrange the transfer of goods, arrange for a boat that would pass customs, and help the Russians keep any rats off the cargo, in exchange for what Mordecai hoped was a sizable kickback. The Russians sent a few of their people ahead to ensure the operation went smoothly, and it was those people Mordecai, Sweet, and some heavies were off to meet.

Drinks were served. Mordecai abstained, of course. He needed to be able to pull his pistol in a split second. Meetings of this sort could go very badly very quickly. He kept his eyes on the Russians from his vantage point, standing directly behind Sweet - a subtle threat.

After a moment's tension Sweet and the head Russian were having what he knew from experience was a jovial, friendly conversation, and began to agreeably hammer out terms. Sensing no imminent danger Mordecai got a good look at the Russian heavies. They reminded him of Viktor, big and gruff, save one. Standing behind the main Russian - mirroring his own place behind Sweet - was a very sharply dressed, very serious woman.

Mordecai's eyes narrowed.

She wasn't very large, nowhere near large enough to be effective against an attack, yet she stood in the position of head of security, acting as the boss's main bodyguard. It was unusual. A gimmick, maybe? Perhaps that was why she was there. A young woman could flummox men in a way Mordecai never grasped. He appreciated them the way he appreciated a well crafted table - nice, but he didn't need to ogle it or run his hands along its legs.

He looked away, scanning the room. Staring at her was probably what they wanted him to do, what she was there for, and he wasn't going to fall for it. Nevertheless, he found he still suffered a lack of information about her appearance. He ticked off the details as he looked slowly around the room. She was small, she had black hair, she wore a dark grey man's suit. He hadn't seen any indication of a holster but it was almost a certainty she was armed. Mordecai decided that searching for her firearm was a valid reason to look at her again. He clearly saw the hint of a holster below her suit jacket. Before he could stop himself his eyes rose and met hers, and whatever question he had about why she was there was answered.

Part of Mordecai's job was to intimidate people by manipulating them with his lack. Apparently they could look into his eyes and  _see_  it. His eyes were more of a threat to them than any weapon, Atlas used to say.

When their gaze met, he recognized the woman across from him the way he recognized himself in a mirror. Her eyes were sleepy and heavy lidded, but impeccably lined, and had nothing but iron behind them.

The corner of her mouth ticked upwards. Imperceptibly, something no one would see but him. She blinked slowly. He felt himself return the gesture, like a secret handshake.

_So_ , he thought,  _you're a monster, too._

**ooo**

Negotiations done, the party transferred to the main ballroom where the night was just about in full swing - for a Wednesday. A jazz band played a sleepy sort of music and couples danced badly, hanging drunkenly on one another like cloth dolls. Marigold and the Russians arranged themselves around a table and lit up their obligatory stinking cigars. They laughed too loudly, save the woman, who didn't laugh at all.

On relaxed evenings like this Mordecai usually alphabetized the storerooms. He longed to ask Sweet to excuse him for a moment so he could escape down the back stairs to the organized, quiet, blessed temple, where beans were under B and flour was under F.

He sighed. Sweet Jesus it was beautiful. Alas, he was stuck here until lord knew what hour, obligated to watch them get drunker and drunker, always prepared to step in should anyone get unreasonable. He doubted that was on the menu for tonight, however. Sweet was gregarious and so were these big Russians. They were having too fine a time for it to go sour this late in the game.

He felt a trickle of what he knew all too well was resentment. It was good thing they were whooping it up now, before dragging Marigold into waters it may not be able to tread. International artifacts smuggling, really? Marigold may be a moonshine empire but it wasn't the right size for those britches. He scowled.

"Even Mordecai's feeling celebratory, isn't that right, Mordecai?" Sweet said, chuckling.

"Nostrovia," Mordecai said smoothly, raising a glass he did not drink from.

The Russians guffawed and toasted one another, except the woman, who turned and stared at Mordecai like he was an insect. He met her gaze with an equally intense one, one that usually made grown men flinch.

She didn't so much as blink.

Interesting. But was she really what she claimed to be? He stared her down over the table, searching her for any sign of weakness.

She returned his death stare.

_This isn't a fight you'll win_ , he thought, and stared harder. She met his gaze with equal force, equal searching.

Challenging him.

He wasn't often provoked into this kind of game with someone who knew how to play. He squared off against her, determined to find the fissure in her will and exploit it, but her eyes revealed nothing. He felt a brief flutter of frustration. She was convincingly inscrutable but there had to be  _something_ in there for him to intimidate. It was just well hidden.

She didn't break the gaze, he did not waver.

A strange feeling came over him. A … stirring. She had real lead in her. He resisted the urge to initiate the secret handshake from earlier, but he would give her nothing. That was then, this was now - and right now he was prepared to stare holes into her all night if that's what it took to win.

Not a twitch, not a  _glimmer_  from her! Just as it struck him that this eyeball joust  _could_ potentially last all night, Sweet cleared his throat.

Loudly.

They both turned to Sweet. The table was silent. Mordecai was taken aback to realize he'd been so immersed in staring that he hadn't heard the table of fat guffawing Russians go quiet as they watched the little contest.

"Well now! Perhaps we ought to formally introduce these two?" Sweet asked.

**ooo**

"Innochka, Mordecai. Mordecai, Innochka. The two of you have similar talents. Our friends in the east would like you to work together for the duration of our business relationship," Sweet said. As he spoke one of the Russians turned to Innochka and repeated Sweet's words in her language.

"Does she speak English?" Mordecai asked.

Sweet asked the translator, but before he could relay the message Innochka turned to Mordecai and said, "Little," with her thumb and index finger held close.

"You mean to send me on potentially dangerous work with a woman who barely knows English?" Mordecai hissed quietly at Sweet. "That is far from ideal."

"I think you'll find her quite competent. And eye candy besides," Sweet whispered back, winking at her. She looked disdainfully away.

"I don't need eye candy," Mordecai said.

Sweet chuckled. "You don't? You certainly had your hand in the jar a minute ago. That was some of the weirdest flirting I've ever seen."

"That wasn't flirting."

"Then what was it?"

"I don't know - it doesn't matter!" Mordecai replied, growing angry with Sweet's flippancy. "I need personnel I can depend on in order to perform my work. I cannot depend on someone I can't communicate with."

"She knows a little English," Sweet said. "Why don't you talk to her a bit? See if the situation is really all that desperate? They wouldn't have brought her along if they didn't think she was up to the job."

"What job?" Mordecai asked. "What will we be doing?"

"What you do best, of course," Sweet replied. "Go on then. Chat her up. If you don't I will."

It appeared her superiors had issued her a similar directive. That was the first any of them had spoken to her save the translator. For all their bawdiness they did not flirt with her, did not include her in their conversations. She regarded them coldly and they avoided her eyes.

The party shifted chairs to allow Mordecai and Innochka to sit together. The two of them exchanged awkward nods, very aware that the entire table was staring at them. They sat.

Neither spoke.

"Do you mind?" Mordecai asked his people. They chuckled softly and looked away. The groups got back to chatting, pouring another round of shots for the table. Mordecai refused but Innochka threw hers back hard and in one go, then regarded him coldly. She crossed her arms.

He got a better look at her. Her hair was pulled back into a complicated series of braids, and was likely quite long but pinned up in a pleasingly symmetrical pattern. She wore a slate gray suit, fitted and impeccably pressed, with a white collared shirt underneath a red vest, and a tie. Her eyelashes were quite long and full, which played unnervingly against her cold eyes.

"Innochka," he said, extending his hand.

She took it, looking directly into his eyes.

"Mort - i - kai," she said.

"Mordecai."

"Mort - ?"

"Mor*D*. There's a D. Mor - DUH – cai."

"… MorDUHcai. Yes?"

He nodded.

"Mordecai," she repeated. She tapped her empty shot glass. "You?"

"No. I don't drink."

"Ah." She tapped her head. He wasn't sure what that indicated. She pointed her middle and index finger at her eyes. "You stay - with eyes."

"Stay alert? Yes. I prefer to." He pointed to the shot glass and then to her. "You don't?"

She gave him a haughty look. "I r _usskaya._ "

"You have a point. Your veins probably transport more vodka than blood."

"Blood?"

They were interrupted by a great explosion of laughter. The men had opened another bottle of vodka and were celebrating by pounding on the table.

Innochka made a disdainful sound and muttered something.

"I agree," Mordecai said.

"These," she said, gesturing to them.

"I know."

They watched them a few more moments. She jerked her head towards the door. "We go?" she asked.

Mordecai blinked. "Go where?"

She nodded. "We go."

She stood and headed for the door. Mordecai followed, unsure.

"Hey now, where are you takin' my man, darlin'?" Sweet sang.

She spun on her heel and spat some flaming invective at the translator, who received it with wide eyes. "Then go!" he cried, interrupting her. She muttered one last thing and stalked toward the door, gesturing for Mordecai to follow.

"What the hell was that?" Sweet asked the translator.

"She said, uh … she said we are making too much noise."

"Charming gal," Sweet replied. "Have fun, you two!"

Mordecai glanced back at Sweet on his way out the door. Fun? What the hell was he talking about? Sweet was laughing. It was a joke? What was funny about fun? Why were they _always_ _laughing_?

"Where do you wish to go?" he asked Innochka.

She pointed to the ceiling. "Up."

"Up?"

"Up. To see. Yes?" She pressed the button to summon the elevator.

"To see what?"

"To … to see." She hooded her eyes with her hands, as though looking into the distance.

The elevator arrived and they stepped in. She hit the highest button.

"To see the city?" he asked.

She gave a curt nod.

He hit the button for the basement.

"No!" she protested.

"They keys to the roof are in the basement office," he replied.

She looked at him blankly.

He sighed. "Keys. To unlock the  _door_." He made an unlocking motion with his wrist.

She didn't understand.

"We go up, to see," she demanded.

She stepped out when the elevator opened at the top floor. He reached out and grabbed her by the shoulder. She spun, knocking his arm aside. His instincts kicked in. Before she could swing her right arm around he blocked it and twisted, securing it in his. He blocked her left swing by digging the heel of his hand into her shoulder, and with the full force of his body behind his locked arm pinned her to the wall.

The elevator door closed and they started to descend.

"I can see we're well on our way to a successful partnership," Mordecai said flatly.

She smiled at him. It caught him off guard. She planted her hand in the crook of his right elbow, gently pulling his arm down. Her knee moved up between them and she nudged him off of her, while letting her right arm go limp to disentangle it from his. It wasn't aggressive - she could have planted her knee firmly in his balls - she was merely disengaging. She stepped smoothly into balance and straightened her suit jacket.

The door opened to the basement and she stepped out, ahead of him, then politely waited for him to lead her.

"You walk in front of me," he said. "No more ambushes."

She tilted her head.

"Go!" he said, pushing her.

She raised an eyebrow and walked. He let her glide past the office door before he opened it. She turned at the sound. He reached in and took the key from the hook just inside the door, never taking her eyes off her. He closed the door and gestured back to the elevator.

"Go," he ordered.

She gave him a skeptical look.

"Oh, for crying out loud," he said. "Elevator. We go  _up!_ " He jabbed his finger at the ceiling.

"Ah, up!" she said happily, and strolled ahead.

Mordecai sighed and rolled his eyes.

**ooo**

They stepped out onto the roof of the Marigold Hotel and looked out over St. Louis. The night was windy and cool. Innochka regarded the vista approvingly, her hands clasped behind her back. Mordecai stood beside her, his hands in his pockets.

"Happy now?" he asked.

"Is nice," she said.

Her eyebrows raised and she looked past him as though something interesting had appeared in the skies behind him. Puzzled, he followed her gaze. The second his head turned he heard a sound, a familiar click that sprung him into reflexive action. He drew his gun as he spun to face her, only to be greeted by the barrel of hers.

They stood on the roof at arms length, at the business ends of each other's pistols.

She smiled and lowered her gun. Mordecai's heart began to beat again.

"WHY are you so INSANE?" he yelled, his gun still pointed at her.

"No no," she said, lowering to put her gun on the ground. She stood, made a V with her fingers and pointed them at her eyes, as she had earlier. "You stay with eyes. You stay lert. Yes?"

He gingerly lowered his weapon, just a bit.

"Lert?" he asked.

She tapped her temple, smiling. "Lert."

"Alert? I stay alert?"

She nodded. "HA-lert, yes! Is true. You  _bystro_ , ah …  _fast_. Is good."

Looking satisfied she gazed out over the city lights and clasped her hands behind her back, seemingly unconcerned with the gun still half pointed at her.

"What are you - what? I already told you I like to stay alert, why all this?"

"We job together."

He just stared. Lowered his gun.

"This was - were you - you were  _testing_ me? Is that what this was? A test? Well  _excuse me_ , madam, I should hope that you'd be satisfied with my credentials as your people presented them to you. The least you could have done was INFORM me I was being taken for a … a test drive!"

He was met with a blank look.

"You don't understand a word I'm saying, do you?"

She patted him on the back consolingly. "Is good. You fast. We job together. Yes? Yes."

His shoulders slumped.

"Glad I made it off the lot," he said.

**ooo**


	2. bam

_updated:_

_4/3/2014_

**bam**

"So here's the lowdown on that bitch the ruskies handcuffed you to," Sweet said the next day. "She's a real piece of work."

"That what - the who that did what?"

It was morning and Mordecai was still a little bleary. Wondering how he would possibly work with someone so unpredictable and impertinent had kept him up the previous night. He was forced to conclude that, at the very least, she was thorough in her work. Her behavior may have been bizarre, but given the language barrier she'd elegantly assured herself of his competence.

Her competence, however, remained to be seen.

"Innochka."

"What about her?"

"She's the – nevermind. I have some background on her. You do prefer to be informed about your partners, yes?"

"I prefer my partners be at least somewhat sane."

Sweet chuckled. "Then you're in the wrong business, my friend."

"Point taken."

"So here's the story," Sweet began. "The ruskie boss did a big favor for some guy - a butcher or something, don't remember exact details so bear with me - anyway, this butcher owed the boss. The guy had fallen on hard times and couldn't return the gesture, didn't know what to do to do. All he had was a very pretty little daughter, sixteen and ripe as a peach. The boss took a shine to her and the deal was done, just like that - the guy was forgiven his debt in exchange for the girl.

"So he takes her back to his - his place, I guess, prepared for her to be upset at having been sold by dear old dad, but she seemed pretty blase about it. So he takes her to bed. She wasn't quite as virginal as advertised, apparently she could suck the chrome off a trailer hitch - "

Mordecai winced. "The sordid details aren't needed."

"Sordid? I'm toning this down."

Mordecai shook his head. "Fine. Go on."

"So there's an explosion, and shots, and suddenly they're in the middle of a goddam ambush, and they're right in the middle of -" he made an obscene gesture " -naked as the day they were born. So boss man is too stunned to move, but this girl just hops right off his cock, grabs the letter opener next to the bed and the semi on the nightstand, and all of a sudden it's the fourth of goddamn July in there! It's a fucking massacre! The boss is just sitting there in bed slack-jawed while a stark naked sixteen year old girl is just *wasting* guys - twenty guys, they said - "

"I'm sure that number is exaggerated," Mordecai said flatly.

"So there's a pile of dead guys in the room and before the boss can even say anything she turns and puts the semi to his forehead. She says - I think it was - 'You can either make sure yours is the last cock I eat, or you can die. You choose.' And so he offered her a job, right there. And she never ate another cock." He chuckled. "I love a story with a happy ending, don't you?"

Mordecai raised an eyebrow. "That sounds like a bunch of drunk Russians were putting you on," he said.

Sweet shrugged. "True or not, the rest of the gang is terrified of her. Just thought I'd share."

"Thank you, but her background is of little relevance to the situation at hand. You said she and I are on assignment tonight. What are the particulars?"

**ooo**

"Are you crazy? What are you doing? Put your clothes back on!" Mordecai hissed.

The lights of the approaching automobile flickered through the copse of trees in which he and Innochka were hidden. She ignored him, shedding layer after layer until she stood in merely a slip and garters. She began pulling her hair out of it's braids until it was a sloppy mess, and smeared mascara down her cheeks with her fingertips. Mordecai just stared, at a total loss. She snatched his hand, curled his fingers into a fist, and pressed it against the side her mouth.

"What? Let go of my - "

"Bam," she said.

"I don't -"

She glanced back. The headlights were getting closer. She pushed his fist against her face. "Bam! Bam!" she insisted.

"You want me to hit you?"

"Yes! Bam!"

Great. Just great. She really was insane after all. And the evening had started of so well.

The job for tonight was a rats-on-the-cargo affair. They needed to resolve the issue of a few goons someone- they knew not who - had hired to intercept a valuable shipment which would arrive by truck in a few days. From what Marigold understood the rats were unaware that the Russians had a St. Louis contact, and weren't expecting a strike. They were to assassinate them on the quiet country road they were expected to be on around nine pm. So, relatively quick work.

The two of them met in Sweet's office to receive their orders, exchanging curt nods. The translator sleepily relayed the details to Innochka. Today she wore a modest black pleated dress, white gloves, and a cloche with a jeweled pin. The outfit met with his approval. Simple and classy. At the very least he wouldn't ashamed to be seen with her.

"I hope this evening finds you well, Miss Innochka," Mordecai said stiffly as he drove them to the locale.

She nodded, looking out the window. "Is good. Ah! Is - is - !" She tapped on her window. Mordecai glanced to see what she was so excited about. They drove parallel to the river, upon which floated a lazy riverboat, white and tiered as a wedding cake.

"A riverboat, yes. You'll see many of them."

"Reef-bot," she said.

"Close enough." He smirked. "Do you happen to know the *name* of the river?"

"Eh?"

"The Mississippi River," he said. "Say that three times fast."

"Ah! Reka! Yes? Me-si-si-si-si-si-pyehn reka."

"Too many si's."

"Eh?"

"Eh?" he repeated.

"Eh?"

"EH?"

She crossed her arms and said something biting in Russian, in a tone Mordecai might have used himself. It was odd to be on the other end of the 'what's so funny?' exchange. She shook her head and opened her purse, producing a mirror and lipstick.

They drove on. She straightened her hair in the mirror and looked contentedly out the window at St. Louis. It began to feel almost normal, as though they were a regular couple taking a drive on a Thursday night. To an outsider they probably looked like Atlas and Mitzi. Not that those two were a normal couple, but they were the closest example Mordecai could summon.

Half an hour later they drove off the road and deep into the copse of trees.

"Hold on to something," he instructed her as the car bumped along the uneven ground, weaving between trees. Once the car was properly sheltered they simply waited for the target to appear. And now here Mordecai was, standing in the woods with a half naked woman begging him to punch her in the face.

"Bam!" she demanded, pressing his fist against her lips, her breath warm and moist.

Something rippled in him. A pleasurable stirring. He flexed the fingers of his hand and made them into a fist.

"You're sure?"

"Da!" she said, glancing back as the lights of the oncoming car lit up the canopy of trees above them. " _Bystro, bystro!_ "

He drew his fist back, and socked her across the face. It was ugly. She hadn't even braced herself, letting his fist do as much damage as possible. She yelped, holding her face, stumbling. " _Просто чертовски Христа!_ " she gasped. "Ow!"

"Well I don't know what you were expecting!" Mordecai nearly yelled.

She nodded, steadying herself. She took her hand from her mouth and saw the blood on it.

" _Da. Spasibo,"_ she panted."Thanks you."

She wiped the blood along her face, down her neck and across the tops of her breasts with a quick swipe of her hand, took off a single shoe, and grabbed her jacket in which she'd wrapped her pistol. Clutching the burden to her chest she limped onto the road, stumbling and trying to run, like a woman who'd just escaped an assault. The car's headlights made her slip nearly transparent against her firm body, the white hem flashing above the black garters on her thighs, offering little hints of her behind.

The car of rats skidded.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" one of them said, exiting the car before it had fully stopped. She turned, her face a fright.

She was  _sobbing_.

She had transformed into a hysterical, terrified wreck in the span of ten seconds, complete with real tears that left trails through the mascara and blood on her face. Mordecai's jaw dropped. They sky may as well have turned green and rained bats. How in HELL had she done that? He could barely  _read_ emotions, much less summon them on command.

All three of the men excited the vehicle. "God, are you all right?" one said.

She looked back and forth between them, as though deciding whether or not to trust them. She finally gave herself over. "Please, please, please," she wept, hunching over the jacket-wrapped gun she clutched to her chest. "Please, help."

"Holy hell, what happened to you, sweetheart?" another said, putting his hands on her shoulders. She shook in terror and threw herself into his embrace, sobbing into his shoulder.

"Please help," she repeated, her voice breaking.

"Do you speak English darlin'?" another asked, hearing her accent.

"No no, no English," she said. "Please."

"Who did this? Where's the guy?" one said, looking into the woods.

She exploded in a fit of desperate hacking and doubled over, spitting blood on the ground, clutching the man's coat.

"We have to get her to a doctor," one of them said. "Sweet Jesus."

"We should take her to the cops."

"We can't take her to the cops, dunce."

"Come on darlin'," the first one said, gently leading her to the car. He opened the back door for her. She stopped a moment, as though again unsure whether or not to trust her saviors.

"It's okay," he said gently. "We'll help you. We'll take you to a doctor."

"Help?" she asked, her voice sweet enough to sprinkle in coffee.

"Yes. It's okay," he said.

"Is …is okay," she said shakily. She got in the car and he shut the door behind her.

"The fuck is wrong with some guys, huh?" he said to his friend. "Who does that to a woman?"

"Christ. Poor little thing."

The men got in the car. A moment passed, and Mordecai saw a flash illuminate the windows and heard the loud pop of a pistol. Confused cries, two more pops. The windshield shattered. Silence.

The door opened and Innochka stepped out, one careful foot after another, perfectly calm. She stood on her toes and tilted her head towards the copse of trees.

"Mordecai?" she asked. She put on her jacket and deposited the pistol in the inside pocket. The jacket was short, stopping just above that little white hem, the black garters, her ripped stockings. The blood he'd spilled was red as a curse across her face and neck.

Her lips had felt so soft against his fist.

"Mordecai?" she asked again.

Looking at her and hearing her call for him summoned something in him he couldn't put a name to, but it was intense and intimate in a way he nearly felt violated by.

"One minute!" he called back. He took longer than he needed gathering her belongings, calming himself by neatly folding them.

"That was quite something," he said when he finally approached her, clearing his throat and handing over her clothes.

She took her clothes and gave him that crooked hint of a smile. "Thanks you," she said.

She did not put her clothes back on, merely put them on the roof of the car, likely to save them the blood. She went around to the driver's side and began to drag the body out of the seat. Mordecai opened the trunk. She seemed to be struggling against the body's weight.

"Allow me," he said, taking off his coat to spare it a stain. She gratefully transferred the body to him, thanks-ing him as though he were the very model of chivalry. He lifted the bulk with his hands under the arms, and she lifted the feet when he dragged them out.

"I take it you've performed that little ruse before," Mordecai said as they lifted it into the trunk. "Brilliant. Never would have occurred to me to put myself at their mercy to assure a one-shot kill. Though I suppose they wouldn't respond to me with pity the way they'd respond to a crying woman - HOW did you just cry like that, by the way?"

"Thanks you," she repeated, though he was certain she hadn't understood him.

"It's thank. One thank. Not -" he began, but stopped when a car came down the road. The driver stared at them with wide eyes, Mordecai dragging a limp body into the trunk and Innochka in her blood-spattered unmentionables. The driver floored it and sped away.

Innochka cursed in Russian and dashed behind the wheel. Mordecai shoved the body in the trunk, slammed it closed hard enough to snap a leg, and hopped in the passenger seat. "Go, go!" he said, and Innochka slammed on the gas, speeding after the witness.

A gurgle came from the backseat. It was from the rat Innochka ran to and buried her crying face in. Mordecai drew his pistol and put an extra shot in him for good measure. Innochka barely registered it, focusing on the chase.

"Stop!" Mordecai cried out, and she slammed on the brakes. The witness's car was parked in the driveway of a house so well hidden by maple trees he almost didn't see it. The driver's side door hung open. They took a moment to reload and got out of the car, stalking towards the house like a pair of hunting panthers, slipping in through an open window.

Thy crept down the hall to a closed door. Light spilled from beneath it. There was a voice.

"I don't know," the witness said. "I don't know! They're fucking dead - yes, all three. I don't know … just get someone out here quick. Who -? I don't know, but it looked like the Marigold butcher - yeah — yeah - no, I'm not positive - I don't KNOW, man, fuck if I know what the fuck Marigold has to do with it, I – what?"

Mordecai glanced at Innochka. She peered up at him, her eyes gleaming in the dark, her gun ready. He put his hand on her gun and pushed it gently down, then pressed her against the wall. She nodded.

Mordecai stepped out, kicked in the door and fired in one motion. The witness turned at the sound of the door being kicked, and the bullet landed neatly between his eyes. He crumpled to the floor.

"Hello? Hello? Max? Hello?" the person on the the end of the phone chirped. Mordecai took a handkerchief from his coat pocket and gingerly hung it up.

Innochka stepped into the doorway to admire Mordecai's work. "Is good," she said, nodding.

"Thank you," he said, puffing with pride.

They carried the body to the car and threw it in the backseat with the others.

**ooo**

Innochka made it clear she wanted to stop to look for her clothes but Mordecai drove on, not knowing how long it would take for the witness's requested reinforcements to get there. She didn't seem to understand why they couldn't stop but didn't protest. He told her they could search for her dress and shoes when they returned for their car. She didn't understand that either, but nor did she complain. She seemed to have developed a pleasing faith in his judgement. As consolation for her clothes he offered her his coat, which she accepted gracefully.

"There you are," he said as she put it on. He looked at her a moment, tilting his head. "You know, it flatters you. Or it would if you weren't a mess. You look a bit like a melted clown at the moment. You don't usually wear that much makeup, do you?"

She tilted her head at him, hair a mess, mascara running down her cheeks, lipstick smeared. In his too-big coat looking for all the world like a little girl who'd been caught red-handed playing in her parent's closet.

"Eh?" she said, eyes wide.

He was going to repeat himself but instead he laughed.

**ooo**

He drove into the factory district to the warehouse where there was a secure incinerator, for which Marigold paid a premium. He spread out a tarpaulin and they dragged the bodies out of the car. The opening of the incinerator was not large enough to accommodate a whole body so some hatchet work was always needed. It was his least favorite part of the job. The pig farm was so much simpler.

He pushed aside a cabinet to retrieve a crate of hatchets and cleavers from a trap door underneath it. Innochka stretched her arms above her head and yawned, then casually took a hatchet from the crate, swinging it to test its balance. Satisfied, she knelt down next to a body and pulled the arm out straight.

"Wait wait wait!" Mordecai cried. "Don't get blood on my coat."

He stepped behind her to help her out of it. She looked up at him over her shoulder with those icy eyes and smiled. He found himself smiling back. What a revelation she was! Fast, knowledgeable, competent, focused. It was _so_  difficult to find a real professional in this business.

He hung the coat up across the room. "Well then, we've got some work to do," he said, selecting his favorite cleaver from the crate. "Yes? Is good?"

She nodded. "Is good."

Sweet mentioned she was a butcher's daughter. Mordecai eagerly watched her begin, wondering if any of those skills had transferred over. To his delight she dismantled the witness with grace and ease, singing a little foreign tune as she worked.

He sighed happily.

It was such a pleasure to watch a thing done well.

**ooo**


	3. the attack

_updated_

_4/3/2014_

**the attack**

"We didn't expect a second car," Mordecai said. "You can't pin this on us. We received bad intelligence."

"I agree," Sweet grumbled. "But they don't."

Across the room Innochka held angry Russian court with her compatriots. They'd grilled her for half an hour and she'd reached the end of her patience, her voice growing steadily in decibels. Mordecai imagined she was saying much the same thing he had - she was skilled, not psychic. No one could be prepared for every eventuality.

They killed the witness, but not before he'd told his bosses of the strike. Now someone was aware of Marigold's involvement in the artifacts trade, but they had no idea who. The witness named Mordecai - the Marigold butcher - but Mordecai had never seen him before. That put them in the vulnerable spot of expecting an attack, but not knowing from what direction it would come.

Asa offered Mordecai a sweet from his jar. Absently he took one, watching the exchange heat up across the room. Innochka was clearly enraged, stalking back and forth across the room making sharp gestures of her hands. She'd managed to clean up her face and straighten her hair but still wore his coat over her underthings; when they returned to pick up her clothes before burning the car, they found them driven into the mud on the road.

"Is she - er - wearing anything under that coat?" Sweet asked.

"Barely."

Sweet raised his eyebrow at Mordecai.

"It's a long story," he replied.

One of the Russians gestured to Mordecai and said something angrily. Innochka replied emphatically. The argument seemed to have focused on him. Mordecai stood, straightened his tie, and approached the group. He stood next to the translator, the only one who had a full grasp of English save the biggest Russian who'd hacked out the deal with Sweet.

"Would you please ask them what the problem seems to be?" Mordecai asked the translator. He nodded and repeated the question to the group.

They all replied at once. The translator shouted back at them and they quieted down, then spoke one at a time. Mordecai glanced at Innochka. She leaned against the wall, her arms crossed, looking bitter. She met his eyes and shook her head disdainfully at the group.

"They say that they're very disappointed with the work, and that if they'd known this would be, ah, so badly done, that they, ah, would have found another - "

"There isn't anyone else," Sweet replied from behind Mordecai. "If they would like to try their chances in St. Louis alone, they can go ahead. Marigold can make it very difficult for them to perform a transfer of goods anywhere along the Mississippi if we choose."

The translator paused.

"Go ahead, tell them," Sweet said. "I'm just giving you boys the facts as they stand."

The translator translated. The Russians exploded in protest. Innochka put her head in her hands.

"They say that you should have gotten the car off the road before you -"

"Nonsense," Mordecai replied. "There wasn't time. What happened out there was not my fault, and it certainly wasn't hers," he said, gesturing to Innochka. She looked up at him from behind her hand. "The blame falls squarely on you - YOUR intelligence, not ours. It might have been better to tell us whatever you knew about these people before sending us out to execute them blind. You did seek our insight into St. Louis, did you not? Perhaps try  _using it_  next time - we could have eliminated this problem before it became a problem. In the meantime stop harassing this woman. If you're displeased with her performance feel free to do the dirty work yourselves. She is a cut above any of you drunken louts, but I'm sure you know that."

The translator repeated this as Mordecai spoke. Innochka closed her eyes and sighed.

"Thanks you," she said.

Mordecai gave a curt nod.

"Go ahead and go  _back_  to your boss!" Sweet said in response to something Mordecai hadn't heard. "If he's smart he'll agree with me, and we can stop wasting time crying over spilled milk and get down to business. All right?"

There was a final exchange and the Russians left in a huff. Innochka went last, giving Mordecai a final nod before she left.

"Yeah yeah, get lost," Sweet muttered at the closing door. His leather chair sighed under his weight. "What a bunch of rubes."

You're all the same, Mordecai thought. He realized he still held the uneaten sweet he'd taken from Asa's jar. He threw it in the trash.

Sweet put his feet up on his desk and lit a cigar. "So, you have to tell me, how did that hotsy-totsy little bearcat end up wearing only your coat?"

Mordecai reported the story of her ruse exactly as it happened. "She's a pleasure to work with," he said. "Very clever, extremely professional. The Russians don't seem to have a proper appreciation of her competence. Were I in your position I'd look seriously into acquiring her."

Sweet smiled. "I doubt we can afford her, but it's a rare treat to see you so goofy for a dame."

"I'm not goofy for anyone," Mordecai balked. "I simply admire talent when I see it."

"Of course," Sweet said indulgently.

"For the record, it's exactly that sort of situation which makes me doubt this whole enterprise. We have no idea what pies these Russians have their fingers in, or who their enemies are. We have to depend entirely on their word for our intelligence and it's already failed us. I never thought this was a good idea."

"I think we can handle it. Every new partnership hits a few bumps at the beginning. You and hosty-totsy work well together, that's a good start. It'll work out."

"I'm glad you're so certain," Mordecai replied, flicking his tail angrily. "Are we done here?"

"Sure sure. Go home, get some rest. Good work tonight."

"Appreciated," Mordecai said.

**ooo**

He slept almost the second he hit his pillow, and woke as the sun went down. He always woke up sprawled diagonally across the bed, tangled in a cocoon of covers. He hated it. Just once he would have liked to wake up with the bed still neatly made around him so he didn't have to start his day with such discord. What the hell kind of races did he run in his sleep to wake up that way every morning? His dreams were often filled with violent and frightening scenarios, but nothing that justified awakening in that level of sweaty confusion.

He changed the sheets and made the bed, percolated himself a cup of coffee, and settled in his favorite chair by the window to read. He was on volume N of the encyclopedia, his favorite reading material. He enjoyed the impartial delivery of information it provided. Magazines were inane and novels often left him lost with their flowery descriptions of the character's inner lives, which, as best he could tell, were nothing like his inner life. Not that his inner life wasn't rich. It was rich in the way of an encyclopedia - heavy with facts, cross referenced with memories, all of it beautifully organized and free from emotional contagion.

He opened the volume and began to read about Naas, Ireland, sipping his coffee and enjoying the dead silence of his twelfth floor apartment. He lived alone above a busy road but he'd seen to it no outside information could work it's way in if he so desired; black out curtains, double paned windows, all worth their weight in gold.

He'd received no calls nor notes, and no one pounded on his door, so he retreated happily into Naas, Ireland, Lord Naas viceroy of India, Le Nebab by Daudet. He was up the whole night and would be until early afternoon. His was well used to his schedule being turned around, as most of his work was at night. He usually took a brisk walk when the sun rose to tire himself out. He would stop by his bakery every morning for a chocolate croissant, which the baker always had ready for him when he walked in the door. He appreciated that kind of competence in a place of business.

"Morning Mr. Robertson. Fresh out of the oven," the baker said, handing him his paper-wrapped treat.

"Good morning to you," Mordecai replied, placing a penny on the counter.

A warm chocolate croissant always left him at odds with himself. They tasted better warm but they were much messier that way. He took some extra napkins but wound up waiting for it to cool anyway. He couldn't properly enjoy it while trying to dodge melting chocolate, delicious as melting chocolate was.

He suddenly thought of Innochka, standing in garters in front of the car just after she'd executed the three rats, calling through the woods for him.

He was startled by her sudden unbidden appearance in his mind. His thoughts were usually far more orderly than that. People didn't just show up of their own accord with no lead-up. Concerned, he traced his line of thought back - what had he been thinking of right before that image intruded on him?

Delicious, melting chocolate.

He frowned in confusion.

What the hell did those two things have to do with one another?

**ooo**

When he woke at sunset a note had been slid beneath his door. This was Marigold's main way of communicating with him. They saved telephone calls for emergencies, as they were loathe to disturb him unless he was sorely needed. A note under the door was anything from a minor coded situational update or an invitation to party.

This note was one of the latter. Apparently Sweet's employer and the Russian boss had kissed and made up, which for some Russian reason required a celebration. Vodka and borscht and vereniki, to be sure. In any case Mordecai could infer that his presence was requested - he told them not to bother to inform him about parties if he wasn't required to be there. He'd much rather quietly read than forcibly socialize.

He arrived late to drunken ridiculousness. The moment he walked into the speakeasy's VIP room a big drunk Russian put his arm over Mordecai's shoulders like they were the oldest of friends, and it was everything he could do not to drop the invasive lout like a bad habit. Sweet saw the unmitigated horror on his face and drew the lout away with conversation, and Mordecai could breath again. He'd have to remember to thank Sweet later.

He scanned the room, seeking an island of peace in this room of idiots. God, it was like being in an abattoir full of retarded children. Why did they bother to invite him at all? There wasn't even any  _food._  He went to the bar and procured himself a soda water. He'd resort to sitting alone if he had to, regardless of being called a wet blanket later on.

Sitting near the opposite wall was a cross-armed, cross-legged, staunchly antisocial Innochka, looking just as annoyed as he felt. She seemed to feel his eyes on her and looked up. He walked over to her.

"Innochka," he said. He gestured to the party. "Is good?"

"No," she replied. "Is bad."

Something very strange and rare happened. Half the heads in the room, the ones belonging to Marigold, turned in bewilderment.

Mordecai Heller actually laughed.

**ooo**

She looked nice. Understated and classy, as she seemed to tend to dress. She wore some black thing, long, with a modest neckline, with lots of layers and a glittering bead every so often. He wasn't sure how it was constructed, women's clothing confused him after a certain threshold of complexity. She wore black gloves, and her straight black hair was pulled back into one firm, thick braid that nearly reached her tail. It was a good thing she pinned it up at work, such a long rope of hair would be easy to grab onto. She could be strangled with that much hair. He momentarily pondered advising her to cut it. Strangulation by her own hair sounded like a bad death.

He watched her bitterly watch the festivities. Knowing she hated it as much as he did was refreshing. She turned and smirked at him as though reading his thoughts. Her lip was swelled where he'd hit her the night before. It looked painful. He wondered if she'd treated it in any way, lest it get infected. He wasn't sure how to convey this.

"Bam?" he said.

"Eh?"

He pointed to his lip. "Bam?"

"Ah," she said, chuckling. "Bam .. is good? Is okay."

"Good."

Someone watched them. He felt the heaviness of a stare. He looked around and saw it came from a Russian. He sat at a table, looking at the two of them and … twitching, or something. He looked displeased, or constipated, or … annoyed? Whatever it was, it was bad. When he saw Mordecai looking at him he rose and walked towards them. Mordecai's muscles tensed for a fight, though logically he knew that was unlikely at this celebration of togetherness.

The ruskie walked up to Innochka and put his hand on the back of her chair.

She did not smile nor greet him nor even look at him.

He said something in Russian. She replied flatly, staring straight ahead.

He said something slightly more aggressive sounding.

She replied just as flatly.

He sighed, and was silent for a moment. The displeasure was dripping off Innochka's face, even Mordecai could see it.

"You're bothering her," Mordecai said.

The Russian gave him an annoyed glance, then turned to Innochka once more. He gestured to himself and her, and then to the bar.

"Nyet, spasibo," she replied.

The ruskie opened his mouth to reply but someone called "Dimitri!" from across the room. He shuffled his weight from foot to foot for a split second before leaving her side. She sighed with relief. Someone had just saved her, perhaps? The way Sweet saved Mordecai from the earlier drunken lout?

"Ah, Dimitri," she muttered, rolling her eyes. She made a gun with her hand and subtly pointed it at his back. "Pow, pow, pow."

"Does he bother you often?" Mordecai asked. He had the feeling that this Dimitri wished to court her and she wouldn't have him. Dimitri turned to stare at her once more, then at him. Mordecai gave him the look that made most men flinch.

He did.

But even as he did Mordecai noticed many eyes in their direction. It was no surprise to him that the men looked at her with desire. Even he could tell she was quite desirable. What puzzled him was how many eyes fell on him, as well. People looked at him differently when he was with her, as though his standing changed somehow by merit of her presence. But why would that be?

Another cheer as another bottle of vodka was opened. They passed it around, not even bothering to pour it, all drinking out of the same filthy opening. He shuddered. Why were people so disgustingly unhygienic?

He shifted uncomfortably.

"We go up?" he asked Innochka, pointing to the ceiling.

She nodded.

People watched them go. He could feel eyes on the both of them, tracking them. Out of the corner of his eye he saw men shift in their seats, frowning at him, eyes darting from her to him and back again.

How interesting.

**ooo**

They went to fetch the roof key but found it was already gone. Mordecai frowned. This meant someone was likely already up there.

On the way up in the elevator Innochka did something strange. She looked at him for a moment, then moved in front of him with her back to him. She grabbed his hand and put it on her shoulder, then slowly turned and knocked it away. She swung at him with her other arm, but slowly, far too slow for an actual strike.

"W- What are you - ?"

Suddenly it clicked - this was the same sequence that led to their brief scuffle a few nights previous. He repeated his response, slowly interlocking her arm with his while she watched, analyzing.

"You want me to show you how I did that?" he asked. "Is that what you want?"

The elevator door opened. He released her, gesturing to the staircase that led up to the roof door. When they opened it two men stood near the ledge. They suddenly jerked away from one another, as though Mordecai and Innochka had interrupted something.

"Heh, hey, hi!" one said. "Nice night!"

"Yeah, we're just getting some air," the other said. "That's all."

"I don't care. Cheers," Mordecai said, leading Innochka to the other side of the roof behind the doorway. She took off her heels and he took off his jacket. He placed her in front of him and they went through the previous night's scuffle step by step until she seemed comfortable enough to attempt to evade him in full speed.

She did, but just barely.

"You may be a fast draw but your hand to hand combat needs work," he said. "I'm one to talk, I'm garbage without a weapon."

"You fast," she said, panting, frustration clear on her face.

"You  _slow,_ " he said, backing a few feet away from her, urging her to come at him.

She hesitated.

"Come on! Tick tock tick tock," Mordecai said as she stalled. He raised his hand, pointed it at her head, and said "Pow."

Frustrated, she flew at him. He stayed in her path till the last minute, at which point he stepped away, extending his arm so it hit her across the chest. He pushed her back and over his knee, falling with her to soften the impact. She ended up on her back with her legs over his thigh, her arms extended to either side of her.

There was a cacophony of gun clicks.

They both turned. Standing before them were Sweet and two Russians, all three pointing their pistols at Mordecai and Innochka.

"No! We're not fighting - don't - " Mordecai stuttered, Innochka echoing him in Russian. They both put their palms up.

"Oh," Sweet said, chuckling drunkenly and lowering his gun. "They're playing. Aww. See, I told you this would be a beautiful partnership," he said, nudging the big Russain boss. "We share all our vodka, our triggermen are playing together, there's two Ethels over there trying to make like they're not necking - it's a goddamn magical night. Ha! Here, let me show you the river," he said, walking to the edge of the roof and gesturing for them to follow. The lead Russian looked over his shoulder at Innochka with what looked like incredulity, but he Mordecai wasn't sure. She stared back at him until he looked away.

She hopped to her feet, brushed herself off, and nodded at him. He nodded back. They began to circle one another. He hopped from one foot to another, then attacked. She blocked his strike, then turned her side into him, ramming her shoulder into his chest. He lost his balance, but before he could regain it she drew her thigh up behind his knee and tripped him, sending him to the ground.

"Good!" Mordecai said. He struggled to his feet. Innochka offered him her hand and pulled him up. He took a ready stance and gestured her towards him. She swung at him, missed, and quickly backed out his strike zone.

"My money's on Heller," Sweet said.

"Do not be so sure," the big ruskie said. "She is deadly."

"I don't doubt it," Sweet replied.

Modercai and Innochka circled one another. Their eyes met. That twitch of a smile. The slow blink. And then, the attack.

"That is a beautiful thing to watch," Sweet said, and lit a cigar.

 

**ooo**


	4. house of cards

Updated

4/4/2014

**house of cards**

Back before Lackadaisy's peak when Atlas was still scrabbling tooth and claw to the top, there was a period of time where Mordecai and Atlas could barely drive down the street without being shot at. One evening after a particularly tense confrontation the conversation turned to tanks. Or, more specifically, how useful such a vehicle would be in their line of work.

"Where could we obtain a tank?" Mordecai asked.

"We can't get a tank, Mordecai. I said it in jest," Atlas said.

"Jest or no, the idea has some validity." He gave it a moment's thought. "I don't see any reason we couldn't build one. How hard could it possibly be?"

Viktor laughed. "We paint Lackadaisy logo on side, drive through police headquarters. Fuck you. We have tank."

"I'm serious," Mordecai said.

"You're always serious, son," Atlas said.

For weeks after the exchange Mordecai became obsessed by tanks. He spent hours in the public library examining blueprints, welding, metallurgy, ballistics. He came to the conclusion that while a full-size battle-ready tank was not an option, it might not be entirely out of the question to add some kind of armor to the current fleet. He struggled with the question of how to do this while keeping the fleet inconspicuous. He didn't divine an answer before the idea was dropped for other pursuits. Nonetheless he remained charmed by the romantic notion of a speakeasy tank.

It was something they could have used right about now. He and Innochka could have just fired a shell into the building and crushed whatever was left under the treads. It would have been a lot easier than what they had done. In retrospect attempting to take on ten armed robbers by themselves was … ill advised.

Then again, there was something to be said for the element of surprise. Half the rats ran into the storeroom, and the other half stained the walls. They weren't expecting a car to crash through the garage door, guns blazing. It was reckless and stupid but damn if it didn't make him feel alive. As opposed to  _annoyed,_  which is how he would have anticipated feeling had he known what would Innochka would do.

They were told to stop by the warehouse where the artifacts had just been delivered to make sure the place was fully secure, only to find their men with slit throats. Innochka took it upon herself to grab her gun, urging Mordecai to do the same, and to his shock she floored it right through the warehouse door. He had no choice but to spray bullets in every direction, but it was effective. Half the threat was eliminated, and the other half fled into the storeroom where the artifacts were held. No one would shoot in there for fear of damaging the merchandise.

They went into the storeroom and locked the door behind them, readying their knives for a deadly game of hide-and-seek.

The room was filled with crates of all different sizes. Mordecai crept quietly around the corners, while Innochka took off her shoes and leapt upon a crate with surprising delicacy. She took another knife from her belt and put it in her mouth, leaping from crate to crate, silent as a bird.

They came upon three rats at the same time. One rat drew a gun but it was too late - Inncohka was perched on the crate above his head. She grabbed him by the hair, wrenching his neck up. He began to scream but was quickly silenced by her blade slicing across his neck. Blood sprayed all over the crates and floor.

"Ugh! Must you paint the room with him?" Mordecai said, leaping out of the way. " _You're_ cleaning that one up."

"Behind," Innochka said to him, and Mordecai spun to see the other two rats charging him. He took the first one with a quick jab through the throat. The other one almost got away but Mordecai tripped him and he went sprawling to the floor.

"Please don't! Please don't!" the rat begged, sprawling on his belly through blood and dust. Mordecai stepped over to him and planted his foot firmly between his shoulder blades. The rat bellowed in fear, squirming, wriggling, begging. He grasped a gold cross around his neck. "Oh please Jesus, please Mother Mary -"

"Yes yes, give them my regards," Mordecai said. He held his breath and brought the knife down at the base of his skull. The hand holding the cross slowly opened. The gold within glinted, and in one smooth movement Innochka had it in her pocket.

"Seriously?" Mordecai asked, aghast. "He's not even cold."

She studied the cross for a moment then put it back in her pocket. "Is gold."

"Very good! Look at you identifying precious metals, well done," Mordecai said. He looked around the bloodspattered room, dismayed. "Also, are you  _always_  this messy?"

**ooo**

There was a considerable amount to clean up.

Mordecai wanted to scold her for driving the car through the garage door and for her overly-messy near-beheading, but he wasn't sure how much of it she would understand. He pulled the car all he way into the building and went about repairing the garage door. Besides one large dent it was in one piece, having come off its hinges in a single sheet. He set it upright and lashed it to the frame as best he could.

Innochka thoroughly looted the bodies of money, weapons, and jewelry before they dragged them into a closet. When she tried to offer Mordecai a share of the plunder he refused.

"I don't need dead men's pocket change, thank you very much," he said.

After a moment of disbelief, Innochka shrugged as if to say  _suit yourself._ She piled her loot into a stray pillowcase she found on the floor.

The rest of Marigold and the Russians would arrive in the morning when the boat came to collect the merchandise, at which time they could transport the corpses to the incinerator. The storeroom was right on the banks of the river, and Mordecai would have just tossed the bodies in if it had been merely one or two. Lacking cinderblocks and rope twelve were a bit much for one river on one night. Into the incinerator they would go. He wondered if there was a phone in the building so he could call ahead and ask Sweet to send a truck.

He found a restroom and changed out of his bloody clothes into a clean set he kept in the car for these situations. Innochka hadn't thought that far ahead but she used the restroom after him, ridding herself of as much blood as possible.

When she emerged her hair was wet. She twisted it into a long, damp rope, squeezing the last bits of moisture out before letting it fall loose around her. She retrieved a comb from her purse and set to combing it out, a process Mordecai watched with fascination. She was pleasingly methodical, separating her hair into sections and slowly working through each with the comb until it lay slick and flat. It seemed satisfying in the same way that rubbing out a stain was satisfying. He found himself watching her hands, willing each knot away with his mind. When that work was done she brought her hair back and wove it into that long thick braid. All he could think of when he saw it was death - catching on something, pulling her head back, snapping her neck.

They regarded one another.

Mordecai's stomach rumbled. He frowned.

"Would you happen to have any food?" he asked.

"Eh?"

He brought his empty hand to his mouth and mimed chewing. "Food."

"Ah!" she said, and began to dig in her purse. After a moment she retrieved two golden butterscotch drops, which she put into Mordecai's hand.

"I suppose that will have to do," he said.

She found one for herself. They unwrapped their candies and began to suck on them, the sound of it uncomfortably loud in the empty room. After a moment their eyes met. Innockha's mouth curled into a snicker and she started to laugh.

"What?" Mordecai asked, already annoyed by yet another joke he assumed he would not get.

She shook her head and shrugged, making a gesture, pointing quickly from one wall to another.

"What does that mean?"

She pointed to her ear.

"You're hearing-?"

Innochka sucked loudly on her candy. The sound bounced off the concrete walls and echoed in a shrill way that made Mordecai and Innochka both flinch. His teeth vibrated.

"I think my ears may be bleeding, thank you for that," Mordecai said. "That was horrible. How did you even do that?"

She looked a bit bewildered. "извините," she said, pointing to her ear. "Ouch."

"Yes, ouch in the ears, very good. _,_ you noticed that! _"_ he said.

She couldn't understand his words but made a face at his tone.

"Learn English!" he demanded.

**ooo**

They did a little exploring and found an office behind a locked door. After a moment of lock-picking Mordecai wrangled them inside. The discovered half a loaf of bread and a half-finished jar of raspberry jam. Under normal circumstances he would have been horrified at the thought of using condiments into which someone else may have stuck saliva-covered implements, but he was so hungry he didn't care. While he set about preparing jam sandwiches Innochka found a record player and wheeled it out of the office in glee. He would have objected to the music but it was late at night in the warehouse district - if a car crash, gunfire, and the ear-bursting porpoise screech Innochka was capable of emitting didn't disturb anyone, a little music wouldn't.

She played something light hearted while they ate their sandwiches. After dinner she fished a deck of cards from her purse.

"What else have you got in there?" Mordecai asked incredulously. "Why is it that women have the most unlikely things in their purses? How do you fit all those things in there? Do they make handbags bigger on the inside than they are outside?"

Innochka shuffled the deck and watched his face. He knew she couldn't understand him but she tried nevertheless, which he found somehow gratifying. They tried to come to a consensus on a game to play.

"Poker?" he asked. What if Russian poker was played differently than American poker?

She gave a helpless smile and shook her head.

"Gin? Twenty one?"

"Nyet. *Durak*?"

"No. No idea."

"Byeh," she said, and picked up the deck, removed two cards, and stood them against one another. She did the same with another two cards, placing them right next to the first pair, then placed a card flat over them, forming a roof.

"Card house?"

"Kartochnyĭ domik," she replied, carefully placing another card.

"I'll take your word for it. May I?"

"Mm."

He took a few cards and they sat quietly for a while, adding floors.

"I have this friend … acquaintance … well, someone I used to work with. His name's Viktor. Do you … know him … by any chance?" The question was halfway out before he fully realized how absurd it was. Good thing she didn't comprehend a word of it. "No, of course not. He was very good to work with, you would have liked him. Huge tank of a man. His work wasn't as skilled as mine but he certainly got the job done. He's ...well, he's Slovak, but that's ... that's close to Russian, which is why I asked if you … um … - " He was going to just trail off, but she seemed to perk up at the word "Russian" and turned towards him.

Mordecai paused. Before she turned he could at least convince himself she hadn't been paying attention. Her'd snared her just as he realized the absurdity of what he was trying to say.

"Um. You have good food, too. Russian  _food,_  we're talking about food now," he said.

"Food?" she asked. "Russki food?"

"I like those little dumplings," he said quickly. "What are they called? Pelma? Pelmeh?"

She blinked. Tilted her head. "Pelmeni?"

"Yes! That's it, pelmeni. My mother used to make them."

"Ah, pelmeni," Innochka said, sighing. She began to speak something long and complicated, gesticulating wildly. She made the motions of pounding dough and rolling it out. She seemed to be explaining how to make them.

His mother appeared unbidden in his mind. Cooking was the only thing he remembered his mother enjoying. Probably because if she was cooking there was money for food. He'd begun doing favors for the local gangsters at thirteen so his younger siblings wouldn't starve. Once or twice he'd attempted honest work at his mother's behest, but those jobs never lasted long due to his lack. As he grew older he began to realize that his family's constant poverty was almost certainly due to that lack in his family line. His family were very intelligent, but cold and insular, and the outside world wouldn't have them. He still sent money back to his mother whenever he could, blank envelopes with no return address.

The card structure had grown tall and they were almost out of cards.

He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms, nodding approvingly. "Fine work. Very stable. Now what?" he asked.

She bit her bottom lip for a moment then flicked a card on the supporting row. The house of cards collapsed, fluttering to the table.

"Why did you do that?" Mordecai cried. "It was perfect!"

She raised her eyebrows at his outburst.

"That's just how you operate, isn't it? So destructive. First you drive the car through the wall, then you spray that guy's jugular vein all over everything, and then you - come to think of it, did you wash your hair in the bathroom sink? You did! How unsanitary!" he said haughtily. "And now you're knocking down perfectly good card houses."

Her head tilted, eyes wide, watching him as she gathered the cards back into their box and slipped the box back in to her purse. She smiled at him, and shrugged.

"That's right, play innocent," Mordecai said.

She smiled wider but paid him no more mind than that. She stretched her arms above her head and yawned, then retrieved the sack into which she put the items she'd looted from the dead men.

"And this, too! Collecting booty," He snapped. "That's just unprofessional. I -" he paused as she took something shiny and metallic from the sack and placed it on the table. A pocket watch.

A beautiful pocket watch.

In fact, a  _stunning_  pocket watch.

He picked it up. It had a beautiful round face with delicately formed, gold art-deco numbers and blue steel hands. The tiniest of geometric tessellations were inlaid in gold around the watch face, so sweet and delicate, like they'd been placed there by fairies. As he moved the watch in the light he saw different patterns inlaid using different metals, only visible when the watch was tilted to this degree or that. The watch band was some kind he'd never seen before, made of thousands of tiny chrome-blue scales that gave the impression the band was made from the skin of tiny metal dragon.

Something akin to infatuation swept over Mordecai. He cupped the breathtaking object in his hand like a baby bird, gazed at it, ran his finger along the lovely ridged edge of the casing. This was fate.  _Kismet._  This watch  _belonged_ to him.

He looked up at Innochka. She was absorbed in the other items in the sack, she probably wouldn't notice if he quickly slid it into his pocket. But just then she looked sharply at him, then at the watch in his hand.

Dammit.

"Beautiful," he said, reluctantly placing the watch back down at the table.

"Mmm," she said approvingly. She picked it up and continued to dig in the sack.

Moredcai sighed. He should have been quicker. Now it was gone forever. Or at least until Innochka was distracted. He'd have to wait for his chance, but it might not come. If she was anything she was sharp.

He watched her carefully wipe the watch clean with a bit of cloth, then attach it to a chain she'd found in the sack. She turned it over and over in her hand.

"Enjoy it," he said longingly.

"Hmm!" she said. She then lay the watch in the palm of her hand with the chain trailing up her arm and extended it towards him, like a jeweler might.

"What?"

She pushed the watch towards him, nodding.

"For … for me?"

"Da," she said.

"You're  _giving me_  this?"

She nodded. "You take," she said.

He gingerly took the watch, still warm from her palm. As he did he felt something familiar. He couldn't name it but it was something he'd experienced once or twice with Viktor. It was a positively warm feeling. He felt her move up a level in his regard from tolerable to enjoyable to someone he might even look forward to seeing, and that in and of itself was blue rare.

He suddenly remembered to smile at her.

She smiled back.

"Drive through walls and loot to your heart's content, Innochka," he said. "All his forgiven."

She nodded. "Носите его в добром здравии."

"The same to you," he said.

**ooo**


	5. books

_updated:_

_4/4/2014_

**books**

When Mordecai was eight years old one of his classmates was killed in front of him.

His mother came to fetch him and his little sister from school. It was cold, so she took their hands and walked quickly. It began to rain, the drops frigid as razors, and people either sped up or scattered. Mordecai watched as Meredith, the girl he sat next to in class, sped past them with her head down and shoulders hunched against the cold. Suddenly his mother pulled he and his sister up short before a speeding carriage, but Meredith, distracted and hurried, was knocked down. She didn't even have time to scream before a hoof came down on her back, and then another, and the carriage wheels rolled over her thighs and neck and she was dead, her muddy face forever frozen in pain and shock.

His sister Elsa shrieked in terror, clinging to his mother, who was equally distraught. Everywhere he looked there were screams and wails. The driver fell to his knees in the mud, beside himself with grief. Mordecai looked up at his horror stricken mother. She faced away from the scene, Elsa's face pressed to her neck.

Mordecai looked at the dead girl in the mud. Meredith, with whom he had shared a desk, who had once given him a pencil when his broke, who had two blonde braids and a patched pink coat. A girl he'd known since he was six was crushed to death before him, and he felt nothing.

Well.

Not nothing. Not exactly.

He'd never seen someone die before - at least never someone so young, and so violently. He'd seen the light leave the eyes of an elderly person on their deathbed and found it curious. A person there, and then not. And now Meredith, there and then not, mangled beneath wooden wheels. He tilted his head to get a better look at her, waiting for the horror to hit him, waiting to feel the urge to scream and cry and wail.

Nothing.

He looked up at his mother and found that she had been looking at him. She was shocked, or aghast, or … hopeless? He'd done something wrong. She grabbed him by the shoulder, her fingers digging into him as she hurried her family towards home, and it was then that Mordecai first realized he was different.

Had  _she_  a moment like that?

He realized with a start that he was thinking of her again. She'd leapt into his mind unbidden all weekend, as though she were hiding behind every corner he passed. He was alarmed. He didn't normally think of individuals this much. His off-work thoughts tended towards the mathematical, the organizational. Engineering. Architecture, sometimes. Weapons. Not people. He'd long ago concluded that there was little he could understand in the people department so he simply didn't bother spending brainpower on it, yet here Innochka was, touching all his thoughts.

He field stripped and cleaned his guns as he did every other morning, "morning" being whenever he awoke. He'd given up trying to revert to a normal schedule and ran his days backwards. The quiet nights suited him just fine. This day he had rolled out of bed at a quarter to four, which gave him enough time to take a brief walk down to the grocer for food, and perhaps stop at the little dark bookstore next to it. With no work to be done he planned on spending his night-day reading and grazing. Sometimes he even did all this in bed, with the thick curtains drawn and every door to the outside triply locked and chained. Blessed quiet. Blessed space. As far from a tenement as one could get.

He put on his clothes and holster and made his way down the block to the grocer. He got a round of bread, spinach, peppers, a can of olives, butter, eggs, black cherries, and a small white cake, then waited in line at the butcher next door for steaks. He watched the white aproned, blood speckled butcher take orders and do his work. Her father was a butcher - was this how she grew up? Carcasses on hooks? Meat and blood?

He stepped to the counter, placed his order. Watched as one of the butchers set into a side of meat with a hatchet, dismantling it with a now familiar speed and skill. He thought again of her, that first night they worked together, dividing a body in a slip and garters. A warm shiver went up though him and settled warmly in his chest.

He blinked. What the hell was that?

"Sir?" the butcher said again, handing the white-wrapped steaks over the counter.

"Thank you," he relied distractedly, and took them. He'd been thinking of her again! Irritated, he balanced the sack of groceries on his hip, half intending to walk directly back to his apartment but instead took a turn into the bookstore out of pure habit. He looked blankly at tables of books, nothing really registering, feeling as though there were some sort of set of motions or thoughts or actions he had to complete before he left the bookstore, simply because those were the things he always did when he went to the bookstore after he went to the butcher after he went to the grocer.

His routine came back to him. New releases. Periodicals. Science and reference, where he usually found something that interested him, but at the moment he was too unsettled to focus. He made his way out along the slim hallway with stuffed shelves when a white book facing outward caught his eye. He stopped to read the title.

"Conversational Russian: A Course in Twenty Lessons and Vocabulary Index."

He blinked. Reached up to take it.

His fingers hovered over it for a moment before resting on the shelf. He stared, for some reason unsure if he wanted this book. Languages weren't his forte. He was almost comically bad at them, having barely managed enough Hebrew to squeeze past his bar mitzvah. To this day he had nightmares about curved and forked letters getting stuck in his throat. Russian? Who was he kidding?

Then again, an attempt would have its advantages. It certainly couldn't hurt to be able to better communicate with his new co-worker, he figured. But there was something else the book insisted on, something anxious he couldn't define. Seemingly of its own accord his hand lifted and hovered over the book once more, then came to rest on the spine. He realized he would not leave without it.

"Fine," he said. "Fine!"

He took the book to the counter and paid.

**ooo**

When he got home he locked all the doors, drew all the curtains, poured the olives into a bowl, and sat on the bed with the book next to him. He put an olive in his mouth and chewed, smirking, as though getting away with something. Eating in bed was a radical act of rebellion for him, a slap in the face to his destitute childhood. As much as he might have liked to Mordecai never had the luxury of sitting in bed with a book and nibbling at something. The tenements were so rat and roach infested that such a thing was an invitation to be crawled on and bitten the whole night through. But ah, not here, not now! There wasn't an insect to be seen in the whole of his apartment. He could eat  _whenever_  he damn well pleased,  _wherever_ he damn well pleased, and he did.

He put his hand on the white book and felt a sudden wave of anxious heat flutter up through him.

Suddenly he remembered that he never took bread or cake into the bed.

He'd never felt  _that_  safe.

He put the bowl of olives aside and gingerly opened the book, only to be greeted with a hot mess of backwards and upside-down letters. He'd seen them before on awnings and windows back home, but because they never applied to him he never paid them any mind. Now that his brain was attempting to make sense of them he felt something near panic.

He swallowed and flipped through the book.

"Surely you're joking," he muttered. He tried to put a sound to some flipped about nonsense of a character that resembled a dismembered B, which was next to a normal looking B. And how many N's did a language need, really? Two W's? One with a tail, one without. All these mutated and dismembered characters irritated his sense of aesthetics far too much to continue. There was no way he could look at these things for more than five minutes without stabbing his own eyes out with a fork. Hebrew all over again, only worse.

He flipped the book closed. "So much for that," he said, pushing it away. He took up his bowl of olives and good old volume N of the encyclopedia, with its steadfast and friendly Germanic characters. He spend a good hour focusing as much energy on ignoring the little white book beside him as he did reading the book before him. He ground his jaw. It was as though the little book had teeth and was continually gnawing at him to be read, without even the slightest concern for how much he hated things he was bad at. Why did it have to be so damned nagging and inconsiderate?

"Quiet!" he exclaimed into the silent bedroom and smacked the book onto the floor. That just made things worse -  _now_  the book was on the floor, where it certainly did not belong, and he would have to find a place for it on the bookshelf in order to feel right again. He gave an exasperated sigh, put the bowl of olives aside, and picked up the little book. He would have to place it on the shelf in alphabetical order, but quickly calculated that in order to do so he would have to re-arrange the bottom two shelves, as the little book was just thick enough not to fit. Any way he sliced it there would be one or two books on their own on the very bottom shelf should he add this one, an asymmetry he could not abide. Frustrated, he opened the top drawer of his dresser, intending to keep the book in there and out of sight until he found a better home for it.

A glint of silver caught his eye. The Polar Chronometer pocketwatch sat on the dresser just where he'd placed it, right next to his cufflinks. In his minds eye he saw Innochka holding it out to him, her blouse bloodstained and wet hair freshly braided.

He glanced down at the little book.

He hadn't properly thanked her, he realized. Not in a way she could understand, in any case. Such a thing offended his sense of propriety. He expected better of himself - he took pride in his impeccable manners. Innochka and the Russians were guests of Marigold, after all. He couldn't have them report back to their superiors that their assigned point man was inexcusably rude.

He cautiously opened the book and sat down on the bed.

Sure the characters were ugly, but perhaps if he started with the symmetrical ones first the task would be more tolerable. He found one, a circle with a line directly through the middle, which was meant to sound like the "f" in "face". As he read further he learned that the Russian alphabet was made up of letters Latin, Greek, and Russian in origin. As he read about the history of the language, something he could easily grasp, he began to feel more comfortable. By the time he got along to simple phrases he felt, if not entirely confident, at least not entirely helpless.

He flipped to the vocabulary index in the back of the book to find the word "pocketwatch."

**ooo**


	6. a weapon only

_updated_

_4/4/2014_

**a weapon only**

Mordecai cleared his throat.

" _Spasibo za_ \- uh,z _a … karmannye … chasy_ ," he said slowly. " _Eto_ \- uh - damn," he muttered, then checked a small slip of paper in his palm, "Ah. Right.  _Eto bylo ochenʹ lyubezno s vashyeĭ storony_."

He'd spotted them in the lobby of the hotel and marched right up with his newly-learned phrase. Innochka and the two Russians with her tilted their heads to the side, so perfectly in synch that Mordecai was reminded of barn owls.

She smiled. He wasn't certain what kind of smile it was. It could have been pleased, or amused, or having a laugh at his expense. The men behind her, one of which was her rejected suitor Dimitiri, looked perplexed. That, at least, he could easily recognize.

"I'm absolutely sure I said that wrong," Mordecai began.

" _Karmannye chasy?_ " Dimitri asked Innochka, but she ignored him.

" _Vy ochenʹ ray! Vy govorite russkiĭ syeĭchas?_ " she asked Mordecai.

He stared at her. Blinked. "Yes …?"

She laughed. " _Nyet_."

"No…?"

" _To, chto karmannye chasy?_ " Dimitri asked again, more insistent. Those last two were the words for 'pocket watch'. Dimitri said them much faster and with a difficult inflection but Mordecai could still understand them.

Innochka's back straightened. Her eyes narrowed. She turned on her heel and gave Dimitri a glare that made the third Russian's ears fold back and eyes widen. Dimitri glared right back at her. Mordecai felt a sudden and very strong urge to punch him in the face. His hand was unconsciously heading towards his holster when Dimitri broke eye contact, huffed, and stalked off toward the elevators. The other russian glanced at Innochka before scurrying after Dimitri.

She took a breath, shook it off, and turned her attention so fully to Mordecai that it startled him.

She grinned. "You, ah … you speak Russki?"

"I'm attempting to, yes."

She gave a single nod. "Is good. My English, ah … is bad."

Mordecai nodded. "Yes. It's terrible."

"Tur..?"

"Ter-ri-ble. Bad."

"Oh. Is bad?"

"Your English? Yes."

"Oh," she said, glancing at the floor like a chastened child.

"How was my Russian?"

"You Russki … ?" She seemed to mull it over. "Tur-ri-ble…?"

"Oh. Well, so it is," replied, feeling chastened himself. "Well. Now that we've established that, I believe there is a meeting to attend?" he asked, pointing up.

**ooo**

The meeting was yet another affair where Marigold patiently waited for the Russians to sort out what they wanted to say and filter it through the gradually more frazzled translator. They could not seem to settle, their voices rising in volume. Innochka made sharp gestures with her hands and spoke in cutting tones. The boss yelled at her. She began to yell back but cut herself short. Dimitri sat next to the boss, smiling smugly. She crossed her arms and legs and settled back in her chair, eyes narrowed. The translator sighed and put his head in his hands.

Mordecai glanced down at the pocketwatch. "I wish they'd sorted this out before we began," he muttered to Asa.

"Seems bad," he muttered back. "Looks like something went wrong with the cargo."

After the warehouse, while Mordecai and Innochka disposed of the bodies, the Russian crew loaded the crates onto a tugboat headed for New Orleans, and from there, South America. Everyone seemed pleased with Mordecai and Innochka's work. If the kind of carnage the two of them doled out wasn't enough to scare their pursuers off nothing would. When the pair returned to the warehouse and Innochka saw that the tug had departed, her demeanor changed. Distracted. No longer engaging him.

The volume of the Russian discussion lowered, exchanged for low muttering among the male Russians. Innochka remained quiet and clearly unhappy. After a few moments the translator looked up from behind his hands, cleared something with the boss, and turned wearily to the men of Marigold.

"Sorry for this delay," the boss said, and gestured for the translator to begin.

"There has been a development," the translator said.

"You don't say?" Asa muttered.

"It appears as though our tugboat was waylaid. It was set afire. Men killed, cargo stolen. But recoverable, we … we think. We believe we know who did this, and where the cargo is now."

Silence.

"You've got to be kidding me," Asa finally said, putting out his cigar.

"If I may," Mordecai began, "how well-defended was the tug?"

The translator turned and asked the group. Innochka lit up like a firecracker, speaking quickly and with emphatic gestures, aiming her words directly at Asa and Mordecai. He watched her face and felt his entire being stop. His skin tingled. His eyes widened.

He  _understood h_ er.

Not her actual words, those were Russian and obtuse as ever, but he was entirely sure of what she was s _aying_. They sent the tug down the river without adequate defenses. She  _told_ them, she  _warned t_ hese idiots that this would happen, but they didn't listen to her. She should have been in charge of the cargo's security. He met her eyes and nodded, feeling a curious glowing lightness in his chest.

Asa, who'd been listening to the translator, crossed his arms and huffed. "Sounds like you boys got hit with the business end of a stupid stick." The translator began to speak but Asa held his hand out. "Don't say that. Ask them what they plan on doing about this?"

The translator asked, then turned back to Asa. "Do you have any intelligence in New Orleans?"

Asa went silent for a moment, thinking. "There … may be some favors we can call in down south, yes. But you'll have to make it worth our while. From this point on you'll include Marigold every step of the way, in every stage of planning. And of course, with added effort and danger on our part there must be a restructuring of our previous agreement. A  _considerable_ restructuring."

"We negotiate," the Russian boss said to Asa. "You and I. Yes?"

Asa gave a nod. "Of course. I'll have a quick word with my man, here," he said, clapping his hand on Mordecai's shoulder, "and we'll get to it. If you'll excuse us?" Asa gestured to the door, and everyone filed out save the two of them. When the door shut Asa rubbed his eyes and sighed.

"Jesus Mary and Joseph alive," he said, and re-lit his stubbed cigar. "You believe this shit?"

"I told you this was a bad idea from the beginning," Mordecai replied. "They're clearly incompetent."

"Let's not play 'I told you so' just yet. This may work out for our advantage in the long run." He took a thoughtful puff on his cigar. "Here's what I need from you."

Mordecai straightened, stood at attention. He liked that phrase. Even if he didn't always like what followed it he liked the phrase itself. Straightforward. Clear. He knew how to respond to an order. It settled his universe, for that moment, into something comforting and logical.

"You and hotsy-tosy whatsername - Anna. Annika?"

"Innochka."

"Right. You seem to have taken a shine to one another, work well together. She likes you. I need you to spend some time with her, learn what you can about their operation, and what happened in New Orleans."

"I'm not sure what you expect me to glean from her. We're barely able to communicate as is."

"Get her away from those Russkies and learn what you can."

"Didn't you just stipulate that we're to be fully informed of all planning as of now? I don't know what she'd be able to communicate to me in halting English that her boss and his translator can't."

Asa shook his head. "With the amount of money I suspect is changing hands here I don't trust them for a minute. There's something they're not telling us. With the body count the two of you left at that warehouse any operation along the Mississippi should know to turn tail and run. But they're still coming. Now what do you suppose that means?"

"That there was something of greater value on the boat than they're letting on."

"Exactly. I want you to find out what it is. Get her to tell you."

Mordecai shifted uncomfortably. "I'm not sure I'm the best person for this."

"Got anyone else in mind? You're the only guy that bitch has smiled at since she got here."

Mordecai opened his mouth but didn't know what to say.

"Don't look so bewildered," Asa said. "For crying out loud, kid, ask her if she wants to get some ice cream and chat her up! It's not that hard. Haven't you ever even  _tried_ with a girl?"

Mordecai blinked.

"Eeeesh," Sweet said. "Look, I'm not asking for a federal case here, just see what she'll tell you. Got it?"

"…Got it," he lied.

"Good. Now get going. And send that fatass back in here."

**ooo**

With Asa speaking to the Russian boss the remainder of the two groups dispersed. Innochka stalked off quickly. Mordecai headed in the opposite direction knowing he would lose her, but thinking that better than asking her away in front of the rest of her party, especially Dimitri. He stopped by his car to retrieve the little white book, placed it in his coat pocket, then decided to head down to the lobby and wait until she showed.

He just hoped she didn't plan to go back to her room on the 8th floor, the entirety of which was reserved for the Russian party, and take a nap. He sat in one of the armchairs across from reception and waited.

When she finally emerged she moved so quickly he almost didn't see her. She wore a long blue coat and walked with her hands in the pockets, her shoulders and head forward, bullish. Her slick black braid fell down her back, nearly brushing the base of her tail.

He leapt to his feet, dropped his hat, stooped to pick it up. "Innochka!"

She spun, looking displeased, but smiled when she saw him.

"Hello," she said.

" _Privet_ ," he replied.

She glanced behind them then took him by the arm, scurrying them out of the hotel. "Come," she commanded. He let himself be led, glad she was taking the initiative. Perhaps this would be simpler than he anticipated. Once they were a block down from the hotel they turned a corner. All the while she spoke quickly and fiercely in Russian.

"You seem distressed," he finally said when he could get a word in.

"Eh?"

"You mad?"

She closed her eyes and sighed, gesturing over her shoulder in the direction they'd come. "So s _tupid_!" she said.

He nodded. "I agree. Stupid.  _Glupyĭ._ They should have let you do what you needed to protect the cargo. I know how it is to have idiots standing in the way of your work. Idiots who don't listen when you warn them. It's frustrating."

She nodded though he was certain she hadn't understood most of it. "Yes."

They stood for a moment, silently regarding one another.

"So," he said, trying to sound less awkward than he felt. "Would you like to get some ice cream?"

**ooo**

He hadn't anticipated having to explain to her what ice cream was, and not being a frequent eater of ice cream himself, he wasn't sure where the nearest parlor was. When they finally found an establishment serving frozen desserts on the bank of the river she smiled and said "Ah!  _Morozhenoe!_ "

"Marroh-jen-air?" he asked.

"Yes. Eyes-crem?"

"Da."

"Is good, we …" she pointed to the two of them, "…we speak."

He bought them each two scoops of chocolate ice cream in dessert glasses. They sat outside and watched the river, the early spring sun having turned the day warm. When she took off her coat he took it from her shoulders as was proper, and pulled her seat out for her. She wore a gauzy cream spring dress with blue piping, and a dainty gold locket hung from her neck. She looked sweet and innocent and girlish. If he hadn't seen her nearly behead a man in one stroke he'd certainly never believe her capable of it.

"Ah!" she exclaimed, pointing to a passing lazy riverboat, tiered and white with a bright red paddlewheel.

"Reef-boat."

"Oh yes, you do like the river boat, don't you? Would you like to ride one? Um…" he pointed to the two of them, "you, me, river boat?  _Da?_ "

Her face brightened. She nodded and clapped her hands, reminding him in her girlish delight of his youngest sister Rose. "Finish your ice cream and we'll go on a boat," he said, in a brotherly tone he hadn't used in well over a decade, yet it returned to him so quickly that he was thrown into a warm whiplash of familial memory.

They strolled along the boardwalk in the sun until they came upon a riverboat dock, where Mordecai paid thirty cents for two tickets. He watched her admire the delicate filigreed arches and banners as they wandered to the deck overlooking the great red paddlewheel. She watched with great interest as it heaved to a start and propelled the boat into the middle of the river. She rested her arms on he railing and sighed something in Russian, then turned to him.

"Thanks you," she said.

"Thank."

"Thank you?"

He nodded. "Correct. And you're welcome."

They stood in silence for a few minutes, soothed by the gentle and barely perceptible movement of the boat, the warm sun and drowsy humidity, river birds and murmur of conversation nearby. It was almost enough to make him forget his task.

"In Russia," she said softly, "is cold."

"It's far too hot here." He pulled at his collar as though trying to cool himself. "Bleh."

She gave a gentle laugh.

He turned so he could lean his back against the railing but still face her. "Innochka," he began, uncertain. "Can you tell me - I'm curious about the shipment. Can you tell me more about what happened to it?"

She looked blankly up at him.

He sighed, reached into his coat pocket, and retrieved the little white book and handed it to her. She grinned.

"Ah! You learn Russki. Is good," she said, flipping through it.

"Yes," he said. "I need your help. Will you help me?"

She nodded, then gestured to a lounger. They sat side by side, the book between them. "Thank you," he said, then flipped to the index in the back to find the words for "boat" and "shipment" and the phrase "what happened."

Her enthusiasm seemed to fade as she turned more businesslike. "Stolen," she indicated by way of the book. "Not protected. Stupid."

"Why wasn't it protected?" he asked.

It took her a good while and a lot of page flipping but she gradually explained that her operation was overconfident. In Russia they were well connected and untouchable, used to enjoying unchallenged free reign on their home turf. They were cocksure to their detriment, and would not accept this when she warned them of it.

"Why didn't they listen to you?" he asked.

She struggled, looking for the right words. "I am gun," she finally said. "I am weapon only." She made a swiping motion with her hand as she said "only."

He was taken aback. "You seem to be the most competent of the bunch," he said. "Why wouldn't they listen?"

Her face fell. She was quiet for a long time, flipping through the book until she finally sighed, pointed to herself, and said "Because … because woman."

He raised an eyebrow. She'd taken far too long flipping through that book to produce such a simple answer.

"They don't listen to you because you're female?"

She pointed to her temple. "They think, ah …" she flipped through the book, "no mind."

"If that's true it's ridiculous." But it was too ridiculous to be true. Mordecai filed that that away, mentally marking it as the location of a secret of hers.

He took the brook from her and flipped through it, slapping together the phrase "What was on the boat?"

She looked perplexed. "You see it," she said.

"Was there anything else?"

She shook her head.

"Why do they keep coming?"

"Money."

He lowered his voice. "How much is the cargo worth?"

"Thousands," she said. "Thousands."

Mordecai frowned. This was nothing Marigold didn't know. He'd have to disappoint Asa, but he'd expected as much. He hadn't held out much hope of finding new information through Innochka. Even if she did know something she had no real motive to tell him, any fondness aside. He relaxed.

"Thank you," he said.

She nodded and continued flipping through the book. He looked over her bowed head at the shore to watch the people strolling on the boardwalk, shuffling smears of springtime pastel and parasols. Suddenly he felt tired. It wasn't often that he was up during the day and the warmth wasn't helping. That said it was a beautiful day. He didn't get out much to enjoy this kind of weather. To enjoy anything, really.

It would be a shame to waste it.

"Innochka," he said, "Would you like to go to the park?"

**ooo**


	7. eagles and hawks

 

They stopped for coffee and strolled around Forest Park, aimlessly and wordlessly. Every now and then she would point to something and ask for the English term, which he obliged in exchange for the Russian equivalent. Lake, rose, fountain. Bridge, road, swan.

 

He offered her his arm. Passerby watched them. He took these looks to be impertinent and invasive and couldn’t understand what they did to garner them. He was almost alarmed until a tiny, bespectacled old woman with shopping bags shuffled past them. She tilted her tiny chin up, put her tiny hand on her heart, and said to them in her tiny old voice, “So beautiful! So beautiful!”

 

Innochka grinned. “Thanks you, babushka.”

 

“Beautiful, beautiful!” the old lady chirped happily. Mordecai watched her toddle off, thunderstruck.

 

His mind swam. He knew, objectively, that he was generally considered quite handsome, and that Innochka was very attractive, but together they must have looked nothing short of stunning. Watching people watching them took on an entirely new dimension. Men, in particular, were interesting. Their eyes settled on her and brightened, then moved to him and faded in sour retreat. Their look of what he now knew was jealousy made him feel quite the peacock.

 

He suddenly understood something about Asa and Mitzi he hadn’t even realized confused him till now. Asa used to call his wife “the jewel upon my arm.” Mordecai hadn’t realized he meant it somewhat _literally_. Apparently expensive cufflinks and a perfect Windsor knot had nothing on a beautiful woman when a man wanted to let the world know his standing. All the other ladies in the park were _ugly_! No wonder he’d become an object of envy with Innochka by his side! He felt lordly. Regal. He patted her hand where it rested on his arm and lifted his chin in pride.

 

Innochka slowed to a stop as something caught her attention. She pointed to a tall domed structure made of metal mesh.

 

“What is?” she asked.

 

“That’s the flight cage,” he said. “The aviary. Birds.”

 

“Berd?”

 

“Birds. You know. Tweet tweet.” He pointed upwards.

 

“Ah! Tweet tweet. Ptitsy.”

 

“P’teet-seh?”

 

“Mmhmm. Go to see?” she asked, pulling him towards the cage.

 

He’d never been inside the flight cage. He knew it was built for the 1904 World’s Fair but that was the extent of it. Inside there was a decorative stone path, on either side of which were trees filled with every manner of chirping, chittering birds, all different colors and shapes. They flew about freely within the structure.

 

She smiled. “So much birds! Ah!” She pointed at a blue, yellow, and red creature with a hooked beak. “Is - is - “ she wrestled for the word for a moment before giving up and turning her attention to a proud blue peacock, who fanned his tail when she stepped close.

 

Mordecai looked up, watching birds glide overhead, silhouetted against the sun. He’d never been one for small, docile birds such as this. He preferred eagles and hawks. Predators. But of course they couldn’t house predatory raptors in this aviary. Soon the eagles and the hawks would have the cage all to themselves, having killed off their weaker peers.

 

 _You’re the impartial blade on which nature cuts the wheat from the chaff._ ” Atlas’s words suddenly rose from the deeper parts of Mordecai’s mind. He smirked.

 

Innochka looked up into a tree, her back to him, her long neck stretched. She rose onto her toes in a practiced, balletic fashion, her wrists arched gracefully at her sides. She looked for that instant like the subject of a painting. Her body was hourglass shaped, which gave the scene a side-to-side symmetry, split perfectly by her long black braid. The lush green leaves of the tree above her and manicured mound of stone-lined grass it sat upon provided a vertical symmetry. For a moment everything was right with the world. Reality was a postcard.

 

He sighed.

 

She titled her head to get a better look at something in the tree, causing the black braid to swing, ruining the effect. Annoyance swept through him like a forest fire. Damn that braid! It was as though she were asking to be killed! It made it far too easy for an assailant to get a hold on her, strangle her, rape her. How could she be so _stupid_ for the sake of feminine vanity? He stalked up to her, grabbed the braid, and gave it a little tug.

 

She whirled to face him. “Eh?”

 

“Cut this,” he ordered.

 

“Kut-?” she asked, not understanding.

 

He made his index and middle finger into scissors and closed them over the braid. “Snip snip.”

 

She laughed and shook her head. “No, no.”

 

“No!?” he snapped. “You think this is funny? Do you understand how _dangerous_ this is? If we weren’t in public I would _show_ you! This will get you killed!” he hissed, white knuckling her braid, the end upturned in his fist like a lanky flower.

 

“Stop this,” she said, forcing her hair from his grasp and stepping back. She let the braid fall over her shoulder, her hand resting on it protectively. She titled her chin up and looked down her nose at him. All at once this was the woman he’d first met in the Marigold ballroom, withdrawn and severe and staring at him as though he were an insect.

 

He held her gaze a moment. “It’s a liability. You should listen to me.”

 

She pinned him in place with her inscrutable glare. He shifted his weight, clasping his hands behind his back. She seemed to relax once his hands weren’t in grasping range but gave no sign of lowering her guard. He stared back. They were at a stalemate.

 

This wouldn’t do.

 

He felt the corner of his mouth tick ever so slightly into the beginning of a smile. He blinked slowly. Her jaw twitched but she reciprocated. It was only when she returned the secret handshake that he realized he’d done it at all.

 

She sighed, relaxing but still clearly annoyed.

 

“Apologies,” he said.

 

“Yah,” she replied, then pointed up. “Birds. Ok?”

 

“P’titsy,” he replied. “Ok.”

 

 

**ooo**

 

 

As the sun began to sink she took his arm and they wandered in the general direction of the exit. After a while their strides synchronized in a pleasing sort of way. As they walked around the lake the air took a cold turn, and Mordecai helped Innochka into her coat. As he did he noticed a great hulk of a man sitting on a bench. A small woman was next to him, with dark fur and little yellow shoes that absently kicked back and forth like a child’s. She suddenly sat up straight and gestured to them, and the hulk turned.

 

Viktor. And the woman was Altlas’s god-daughter, Ivy.

 

Adrenaline shot through Mordecai’s viens before he realized that they were in public, so there was not much possibility of this meeting turning violent. No, it would be merely awkward. He took a deep breath and approached them.

 

Viktor grunted at him.

 

“Eloquent as ever, Viktor,” he said. “Miss Pepper, a pleasure.”

 

Her eyes went wide as though surprised he’d addressed her. “Hello again.”

 

They all went quiet. Started at one another.

 

“Who’s your friend?” Ivy asked suddenly.

 

“Of course, how rude of me. This is Innochka. Innochka, these are Viktor and Ivy. Former associates of mine.”

 

“Hello,” Innochka said, demure. She took Mordecai’s arm.

 

Viktor looked at her and his expression lightened the way most men’s did. An odd twinkling began in Mordecai’s chest. He blinked and held his breath as Viktor’s eyes made their way over to him. He drew Innochka closer, waiting for Viktor’s reaction.

 

His brow furrowed. He looked confusedly between them, then finally at Mordecai’s face. His expression was priceless. Mordecai felt a slow glow move up through him as he smirked down at his former partner. He placed his hand possessively over Innochka’s as if to say _yes, this is mine, what of it?_

 

Viktor’s eyebrows raised.

 

“What brings you two to Forest Park this evening?” Mordecai asked.

 

“Ivy says, is nice day,” Victor said.

 

“I’m trying to get this big oaf into the sun for once,” Ivy said, slipping her arm through his, her white-gloved hand dwarfed against his massive forearm.

 

“A worthy endeavor,” Mordecai said graciously. “How’s the knee, Viktor?”

 

The hulking Slovak glowered up at him.

 

“Better all the time,” Ivy said brightly.

 

“Glad to hear it. Well, we’d best be off. Have a pleasant evening. Give Mitzi my regards.”

 

“We will,” Ivy said. “Bye.”

 

“Goodbye,” Innochka said softly. Mordcai felt Viktor’s eyes following them. When they were out of earshot Mordecai couldn’t help but grin. He’d managed to i _mpress_ Viktor Vasko! Ha!

 

“You are happy!” Innochka said incredulously.

 

He chuckled. “Yes. Yes I believe I am. Oh, that was priceless,” he sighed, reaching down to take her hand. “You've quite the gift, Miss … what is your surname?”

 

“Eh?”

 

“Mordecai *Heller*,” he said, pouting to himself. “Innochka … ?”

 

“Volvakov.”

 

“Innochka Volvakov. Miss Volvakov.”

 

“Mister Heller?”

 

He nodded.

 

“Is good,” she said.

 

“Glad you approve,” he replied, and they walked hand in hand through the night, towards the speakeasy.

 

**ooo**

 


	8. A Dozen Tallow Candles

The plan came together quickly and without them. While he and Innochka dawdled at Forest park a course of action was determined without their input. He supposed it was as good a plan as any, all things being equal. Innochka seemed satisfied at the very least. It seemed to Mordecai that this was not the nod to her competence she seemed to take it as, but rather a case of her moronic compatriots sending her to clean up their mess, but he figured it was best to let it lie. No need to distract her on a mission this delicate, though he himself was distracted every time he saw his own left hand. Sitting next to her on the train to New Orleans, he lifted his tea cup and there it was, that glint on his ring finger - a simple gold band that matched hers.

The previous night Innochka released his hand as they turned the corner towards Marigold. It was only after she freed them that he realized their hands had been entwined as long as they had, and the even stranger realization that he hadn't noticed - or rather that he hadn't minded. Contrary to everything he'd ever predict that state of affairs felt entirely natural. It confused him, so he ceased thinking about it. Thats what he usually did when found some interpersonal issue puzzling and it had served him well thus far. However this particular task was bound to be all different shades of "intrapersonal", and that knowledge had kept him up last night. Basic friendship could entirely flummox him at times, and from what he understood he was bad at pretending it didn't - so how was he supposed to convince a perfect stranger that he and Innochka were engaged?

He'd asked Sweet the same question, sitting wide-eyed as a child in his office.

"Well he's a perfect stranger," Sweet said. "You've got that working for you. But I wouldn't worry too much. You two come off as quite the pair when you're together."

What did he mean by that? "But I don't- "

"Look, just watch the couples around you when you're out and about. Do what they do. If you feel confused let Innochka take the lead, she's probably going to be better at this than you. If you do something weird she'll probably cover for you."

Mordecai opened his mouth but nothing came out, until he finally choked, "I'll have to speak the part as well. I'm not sure I can convince - "

"Be like Atlas," Sweet said.

He blinked. Shook his head. "What do you mean?"

"You were at Atlas's shoulder the entire time he courted Mitzi, right? You're Atlas. She's Mitzi. Just play the part."

"But I don't remember - "

"Just try. Look, it's not going to be very long. A night or two at the most. Get in, do the job, get out. Make sure to keep the booze flowing and it won't matter how awkward you act. Young men in love are veritable fountains of awkward, and everyone wants to believe in young love." Sweet put a cigar between his teeth and lit it. "You can do it. Now go home and get some rest. "

Flummoxed and anxious he searched briefly for Innochka but couldn't find her. Presumably she was being informed of the plan right now. Would she be capable of playing the blushing Polish bride-to-be, giddily allowing her fiance to shower her with priceless antiquities? She'd shown herself to be an excellent actress the first time they worked together. That knowledge calmed him a bit as he pulled into the garage and took the elevator up to his apartment. At the very least she'd have some useful insight into this situation. If he was at a loss he could take cues from her.

And from Atlas.

Hearing Sweet speak of him so casually always lit an ember of indignation in his Mordecai's chest that he'd become skilled at stamping down. Be like Atlas? No one could be like Atlas. Atlas was as good as a living god; asking Mordecai to be like Atlas was like asking him to be like Zeus.

But, he supposed, he'd have to try.

He searched his memory for images of Atlas and Mitzi's courtship. He way his back straightened when Mitzi was on his arm. How he leaned in close and spoke softly to her. The way he swept her hair aside to place a trinket round her neck, then leaned down to kiss her softly on the jaw, once, when he hadn't known Mordecai was watching.

An unbidden memory bubbled up, sour and bitter enough to make him wince. His father's shaking hands coming to rest on his mother's shoulders as the family watched the last tallow candle burn down to nothing. The warm weight of his youngest sister Rose as she crawled, shivering, into his lap, and he wrapped a thin blanket around the both of them. She rested her cheek on his shoulder and whispered into his ear, "When will papa be better again?"

He didn't reply, because Papa would never be better again, ever. He would shake and shudder and cough and soil himself, day after day after day, until he finally died of it and left his family in this utter poverty. The last of their money and all his mother's time went to caring for him, and for what? Let him die, just let him die, he wanted to scream at his mother, he's not good for anything anymore! His eyes fell to her pregnant belly, the last thing he saw before the candle finally flickered out. It's him or the baby, he wanted to shout, to shake into her. You can only feed one.

For the two years after that night until his father finally dwindled down to a living corpse Mordecai could barely stand to look at the man, idly ailing while his family starved. Had his father any amount of decency he'd have done the right thing and thrown himself from their 8th floor window when the baby got sick. His mother spent so much time fruitlessly attempting to prolong his life that the baby went unprovided for, without the amount of doctor's care it needed. When they put the baby in the ground, a service his father slept through in a laudanum haze, his mother insisted to herself that Yahweh gave and Yahweh took away, but Mordecai knew the truth: his father took and took and all he did was waste away.

The happiest day of his young life was when that man finally breathed his last. Mordecai took the money his mother had been saving for his medicine and bought the family a dozen tallow candles, a fresh loaf of challah, and a pot of honeyed butter. He and his sisters ate quietly in candlelight while his mother tore black ribbons of mourning from one of his father's shirts. She tied them round their upper arms. Mordecai wore the ribbon with pride for the seven days of mourning, like a badge of honor.

His father had ben a vacuum of need, taking the food right out of his children's mouths. Mordecai never counted on anyone for anything after that, especially not the men he kept books for. He was sure those old heavyset boars cheated him for every red cent they could. He was sixteen and had a family to feed, so he cheated them right back.

And then along came Atlas, an older man who - instead of taking everything - came into his life at just the right moment and gave him everything. Mordecai's memory of him was shot through with that weird and warm and wonderful feeling, strong yet strangely tender, that he'd slowly come to realize was gratitude - a profound depth of gratitude that had turned murder into a blissful sort of obedience. This was why he liked hawks - he knew what it was to fly from a strong arm and return the with the kill to a master he trusted and admired and wanted to emulate.

So emulate he would.

He went to his closet and retrieved a bowler hat, something he never wore but Atlas did. He didn't have a cane but he had a three meter ruler. He put on a long coat, placed a tie pin and straightened his collar. He looked in the mirror. His first impulse was to feel incredibly silly, but he pushed it away and confronted himself, as Atlas.

He lifted his chin, straightened his shoulders. Steadied his gaze.

"Atlas May," he said, extending his hand towards his reflection. "I am - my name is - I'm Atlas. Atlas May. Atlas May." He cleared his throat. "And this -" he put his arm around an imaginary waist, "this is - this*- is my fiancee, Innochka. Ehm. Mitzi. Mitzi Montgomery."

He tried to imagine her there, really imagine her, tried to conjure her as she'd looked that day. Innocent and girlish in her white dress, St. Louis drifting by behind her, stray locks of hair scattered every which way by the warm spring wind. He remembered how Viktor had looked at the two of them and let that funny pride fill his chest, as though whatever Viktor thought they were, they'd be.

He crooked his arm, patting Inncohka's imaginary hand. "I'm Atlas, Atlas May. And this is my fiancee, Mitzi Montgomery." He tipped his hat in a gentlemanly, Atlas-like fashion. "Pleased to meet you."

ooo


	9. Ephraim and Menashe

Her eyes lit up when he presented her with the ring at the train station.

For a moment it was all almost believable, picturesque. She made a soft, feminine sound as he opened the ring box towards her, two fingers held daintily to her mouth. This reaction was not for anyone - a faux public proposal was not part of the plan - this was her genuine response to the ring his grandmother had sewn inside a dollhouse pillow for safekeeping so many years ago. It was a delicate band of rose gold inlaid with precise oynx filigree, with a single pearl mounted as a centerpiece. Set on the very top of the pearl was a diamond no larger than the head of a pin.

"Это так мило!" she said.

"Hm?" he replied, glancing at the departure times.

"Is … is nice."

"Glad you approve. Put it on. Try not to damage it."

She slid it onto her left ring finger, gazing admiringly. He retrieved his grandfather's simple gold band from his jacket pocket and put in on his corresponding hand. Innochka held her hand up to his. The sight of their respective digits with matching wedding bands did something strange to his stomach. It was an unsettling sensation, not entirely good, but not entirely bad. It was similar to the feeling of walking out into an unexpected snowfall in late April. Of seeing something one hadn't expected to see.

Years ago his mother gave him the tiny pillow into which the rings were sewn. She pushed it tearfully into his chest until he finally agreed to take it, insisting he have something to give to his wife one day. He only took it to appease her, but she must have known that. She must have known she was unlikely to see him again, her son who'd just burst into their apartment and shoved four stacks of bills into her hands. She stood by and fretted as he blindly packed a bag, thinking only of train time tables, of which would get him out of New York the fastest. She'd made him take the rings, his yarmulke, and his father's tallit. Fighting her would only waste time so he shoved them into the suitcase, forcing himself to be still as she put her arms around him to whisper a protective prayer. May you be like Ephraim and Menashe, may God bless you and guard you, may God show you favor and be gracious to you, may God show you kindness and grant you peace she'd whispered in Hebrew, her hot wet cheek pressed to his. His next memory was of racing through the streets to the train station like a demon was biting at his heels.

He looked at their hands, the twin rings, his grandmother's diamond crowned pearl sitting triumphant on Innochka's finger. He smirked. What would the formidable, long suffering Tzipporah think of this goy wearing her mother's ring?

Oy gevalt, a shiksa! he heard so clearly he almost laughed.

Innochka smiled and wiggled her fingers, then put her arm through his. He almost admonished her against getting carried away, but then this act was supposed to be convincing. No harm in her acting like a girl who'd just been given a beautiful ring by her suitor. She sidled close to him, smelling slightly of rose oil. Smiling primly, long-lashed eyes downcast, she pulled her long black braid shyly over her shoulder. She could radiate girlish innocence when she wished, as she had at the ice cream parlor days before. He knew it was affectation but he couldn't help but be drawn in for a moment. After all, if one is going to pretend to put a ring on a woman's finger, it helps if that woman has a high likelihood of being the most winsome in the area.

He took a brief glance around at the population of the train station and nodded. He'd give it a statistical likelihood of 92% that she was the best looking female in the general vicinity. A man could trade stock on those odds.

A bi gezunt, his mother said again. You could have done worse.

ooo

The carpet in the main corridor of the train was a surprisingly elegant tessellation of right triangles, navy blue on red. Mordecai knew this because he was doubled over on the floor, his arms wrapped around his midsection. They cushioned his wobbling diaphragm, which was unsure if it was safe to start functioning normally again after receiving, at a high velocity, the business end of Innochka's right elbow.

"Иисус, какого черта ты это сделал? Eh? Mordecai-? О, черт." She crouched down to help him up. He leaned on her and rose, gasping, to his feet. She took the key to cabin 5A and unlocked it, then helped him onto one of the beds and shut the door behind them. She sat on the opposite bed. "Take breath!" she ordered, and poured him a cup of water from a small jug that sat on the table between then.

I'm trying, he would have snapped if he could speak. He fell onto the bed on his side. At the very least the cabin upgrade had already paid off.

The trip to New Orleans would take thirty hours, so he'd decided to pay extra for a sleeper cabin. This job would be difficult enough, no need to complicate it further through lack of proper rest. The crowd pressed around the entrance to the train. He glanced behind him for Innochka just as he felt her take his hand as they cut through the crowd to board. "Ladies first," Mordecai said, taking off his hat and standing back to allow Innochka to board before him. They squeezed themselves into the narrow corridor that led down to the sleeper section. They were directly behind another couple, the female half of which possessed a high-pitched and irritating giggle, which she produced whenever her beau surreptitiously grabbed at her behind. Mordecai usually shut this sort of annoyance out of his mind but Sweet had advised him to watch how couples act.

"Stop it!" the female half whispered, shooing the male's hands away, giggling. "Stop!" She turned to face the male, stopping the line for a moment, a strange smirk on her face.

"Go, keep going. You're holding up the line!" her said, pushing her gently.

"Stop it," she insisted, and turned, yelping when he goosed her yet again. The couple found their cabin. Mordecai watched as the male unlocked it, then took the female by the waist and pulled her giggling in with him, shutting the door behind them. Mordecai titled his head thoughtfully. That didn't look so difficult. He reached down, planted his hand firmly on Innochka's posterior and squeezed, expecting a girlish giggle.

Instead he became acquainted with the floor.

"Drink," Innochka said, pushing the water at him.

He took the cup shakily, glaring at her.

"Почему вы сделали это раньше? Why do you do?" she demanded, pointing at her behind.

He propped himself up on an elbow and took a sip, coughing. "I was trying to … be …."

"To be…?"

He set the cup down and pointed to the ring on his left hand.

"Oh!" Innochka said, eyes widening. "No no!""

"Seems not!"

"This is not …" she opened and closed her hands, looking for the words. Finally she sighed. "You must be … more … nice," she said firmly.

"More nice?"

"Yes. You do not - " she made a grabbing motion. "No! You must be nice." She took his hand, raised it to her lips, and mimed a kiss. "You see? More nice."

"I believe the word you're looking for is genteel," he said. She had a point. He could not recall Atlas groping Mitzi in such public manner. Though it seemed fairly obvious now, it hadn't occurred to him that when imitating couples it might be best to be more discerning about which he chose to imitate. All Sweet had said was watch the couples around you, not watch the couples around you who aren't acting like lustful trash.

"Gen-teel," she said.

"Yes. More nice." He nodded and took a sip of water.

"No caboose," she said, pointing again.

He started to feel stupid. "Apologies," he muttered.

Her face contorted slightly in a way he could not quite read. She leaned towards him and gently placed her hand over his solar plexus in an almost motherly fashion, her fingertips barely touching the place she'd elbowed him.

"No no, I sorry," she said. "You are ok?"

He smirked. "Bam."

"Oh no!" she said, and chuckled. "Bam!"

ooo


	10. max & julita

 

**max и julita**

It began to rain, and that paired with the slow rocking of the train made for a hypnotic afternoon. When the knock came on the cabin door they were both asleep on their respective beds, Mordecai with a heavy math textbook open on his chest, and Innochka face down on some sort of pulp romance novel she'd been reading. Every so often she would laugh aloud at it. Those sharp laughs, quickly muffled by her hand, were the most objectionable thing about sharing the cabin with her. Otherwise she kept pleasingly to herself, and to her great credit did not snore. She was far less obstructive than Viktor, who either stared out the window like he was making a list of scenery he'd like to kill or snoring loudly and intermittently onto his chest.

When the knock came they snapped awake. Mordecai sat straight up, his book hitting floor with a heavy clunk. Innochka, who'd begun moving before fully awake, fell into the sway of the train and smacked her head on the bulkhead. "Ой! Fyck!" she cried.

Mordecai stumbled to his feet and snapped the door open. Before him stood a stewardess bearing a tray with bubbling champagne flutes.

'What?" he snapped.

"Complementary mineral water to let you know dinner will be served in the dining car in half an hour," the stewardess said, handing him two flutes in quick succession, faster than he could refuse them. He said a muddled thanks and stepped backwards into the room, deftly closing the door and setting one flute on the small shelf which served as a table between the beds. He handed the other to Innochka, who hissed and rubbed her head where she'd struck the wall.

"Eh?" she said, taking the water.

Mordecai shrugged. "Complimentary. Apparently."

"Ah. Thank you." She took a sip and made a face. "Bleh," she said, and began digging around in her suitcase.

Mordecai retrieved a folded piece of paper from his jacket pocket and looked it over, drinking half his water and setting it aside. It was a note Sweet had given him detailing the identities of Max and Julita. "So, have you given any thought to – wait, what do you think you're doing?"

"Eh?" she said, pouring whiskey from a discrete flask into his mineral water, and then into hers. She smiled and handed him his glass. "Nostrovia!" she chirped.

I don't drink Mordecai began to say, but his sense of propriety stopped him. According to what little he knew of Russian culture it seemed a good bet that refusing a drink poured from one's personal flask would be considered inexcusably rude. She smiled, pushing the flute at him.

"I – thank you. Um." He raised the glass. "Nostrovia," he said. He waited a split second to see if she – yes, she did indeed down the entire thing, so it was a good bet he was expected to as well. He tipped it back, praying he could do so without coughing or choking. He'd never properly re-learned how to drink a shot after the first time he learned, which was after his second or third Bunnyhug. By morning his ability to down a shot and most of that night's memories were dust in the wind.

He managed to finish the drink with a minimum of choking to death, but he'd barely gotten it down before a grinning Innochka pushed another one at him. "Nostrovia!" she said, drinking.

"Nost-" he began, and drank new one as well, but the new one was whiskey without the benefit of water. Mordecai coughed, his eyes watering. "No, no," he said, pushing away the third one on offer. "Please no more," he said, coughing into his fist.

Innochka shrugged and hit him companionably on the back, chuckling.

"I don't drink," he said.

She nodded very gravely, and when he wasn't looking, drank the remainder of his shot. She tapped the piece of paper in his hand.

"Yes," he said, clearing his throat one last time. "On to business. I was wondering if you'd given any thought to - " he trailed off, realizing she could not understand him. He unfolded the paper and pointed to the names: Max Goldwine and Julita Banas.

"Julita?" she asked.

"Yes, and Max," Mordecai said. " 'Max is a banker from New York. He met Julita, a Polish university student, at the Statue of Liberty.' Pfff. I was born in Brooklyn, no native New Yorker goes to the Statue of - " he stopped short, realizing a second too late that he may have just given Innochka a bigger peek inside his life than he'd ever intended. He glanced up at her, but she was arranging clothes on a bed and didn't seem to realize he'd stopped speaking.

"You don't understand me anyway. If he asks, I'm saying we met at temple," Mordecai said. "That's where people like you and I meet. Statue of Liberty, who wrote that? What are you doing?"

She turned to face him. She'd tucked her hair into a bun and held a delicate, pale yellow dress to her chest. She picked up a pair of glasses from the bed and put them on. They were a high prescription - immediately her eyes became round and glassy and three times their natural size.

Mordecai laughed. It was a high and sudden laugh. "Is that your costume?"

"Julita," Innochka said.

"Not with those glasses."

"Eh?" Innochka said, tilting her head.

"Julita, dearest, you look like an ostrich, please don't do this to me," Mordecai said. "It's hard enough to play this role without your face looking like the headlamps of a Bugatti." When she looked at him in confusion he took her by the shoulders and turned her towards the mirror hanging between the beds.

"Julita, no," he said, and Innochka yelped when she saw herself.

"No! Oh!" she said, taking the glasses off, laughing. "Julita no! Ah, no - один момент - " she said, and dug around in her suitcase again. After a moment she produced a different pair of glasses of a simpler design, but held her fingers closed on the corner hinge.

"This," she said.

"You broke it?" Mordecai said. "Give them here. Is the screw still in it? Good! My sister could not keep the screw in to save her life, I fixed her glasses at least three times a week." He glanced up at her. "More than you need to know but you don't understand me anyway."

"Fix it?" Innochka said.

"Of course," he replied, setting the glasses down on the surface between the beds. He slid his fingers into a secret pocket on the inside of his vest to reveal a tiny eyeglass repair set.

"Oh," Innochka said approvingly. "You have this."

"Always." He gently coaxed the screw back into place, thinking of his younger sisters. He gave a small, private smile. "I spent a large portion of my formative years fixing broken glasses for little girls. Why do you have so many pairs of glasses, anyway?"

He glanced up at the objects strewn across her bed. His eyes fell on three archeology textbooks, two in Cyrillic and one in English.

"Aha, so you figured student equals smart equals glasses, did you? Brought a few options? Its just archeology, it's not exactly medicine, is it? The glasses aren't needed," he said handing them to her.

She slid them on, bit her lip, and batted her eyelashes at him.

He considered this. "Now you really do look like someone I'd meet at temple. My mother would be thrilled. Maybe the glasses do work. These glasses though, not the headlamps." He smirked. "We should change your name to Shira or Tamar, give old Tzipporah the full package. She'd be beside herself. We should put the rings on, have a picture taken and send it back to her, it would probably make her life. Look mother, I finally found a nice Jewish girl, and she's a shiksa!" Mordecai said. After a moment he caught himself, cleared his throat, straightened his collar. "Excuse me, all the whiskey you press ganged into me just kicked in. You know, in the United States it is not considered good manners to force people to drink."

"Okay," Innochka said. She pointed to his suitcase. "Max?"

He blinked. "What? Oh! Oh I – well I didn't bring much in the way of a costume, just a dinner jacket and - " he retrieved two items from the shelf above his bed, a bowler cap and a cane.

Innochka looked skeptical. "What?"

"Well – I – I mean - " Mordecai said. "Sweet told me to … be like..."

Innochka took him by the shoulders and turned him toward the mirror.

He looked like the star of a musical about car salesmen.

"Max, no," Innochka said.

"Oh! Max no indeed, " Mordecai said to himself. "Not so literally. Right. Sweet meant it- not- not that literally." He pointed to the bowler hat. "He didn't mean 'be like Atlas' in the sense I took it," he explained to Innochka. "In the sense of, um – personal attire. I thought he meant something else. I don't – sometimes I don't - "

"No hat, no cane," she said. "Okay?"

He nodded. "Agreed." He cleared his throat. "No hat. No cane."

"No caboose," Innochka said, pointing down.

"Or bam?"

She smiled. "Or bam."

"Well, there's the first entry in your instruction manual. Chapter one: 'No Caboose or Bam."

"Mmhm," she said. "More nice."

"And there's chapter two. Chapter three is how to cope with how disorganized, unpredictable, and messy you are," he said, gesturing to her pile of clothes. "You put on a polished veneer, miss, but you don't actually have it together at all, do you?"

He caught a glance of the two of them in the mirror – her with her freshly repaired glasses, hair falling out of a hastily made bun, a slinky yellow dress hung round her neck, and him with a disheveled dress shirt, red in the face, and wearing a funny hat.

Innochka held up her flask, toasting the odd couple in the mirror. "Nostrovia! Max и Julita!" she said, took a swig, and offered it to Mordecai.

"Nostrovia," Mordecai said, shaking his head. He raised the flask, but didn't drink.

**ooo**


	11. the libertine

_I realized my casting of "Julita" as a Polish student raised some problems plotwise (as she cannot actually speak Polish and would need to) so I have re-cast her as a Russian student "Max" met while traveling (or at temple, should Mordecai have his way), whom he is (ostensibly) trying to sweep off her feet with lavish gits. I am keeping the (very Polish) name Julita Banas because I like it._

**chapter eleven**

**the libertine**

"So give her a little kiss," Grigor Orlov said, his breath reeking of liquor.

On his heavy keyring, among dozens of keys, hung the one to the vaults. They'd endured an interminable dinner and an evening of miming young love to get here. Failure was not an option at this critical juncture.

"Can't you see how badly she wants you to kiss her?" Orlov said.

Innochka giggled, hiding behind her hand.

"Come on now, look at that," Mr. Orlov said, lasciviously eyeing Innochka. He leaned close to Mordecai, voice hushed as though this were a private aside, as though she wasn't standing right there. "You can't hold out on a girl like that. I know you want to kiss her."

Mordecai tried to wrest his mind back from the grip of whiskey. "I'm - " he began.

"An  _insufferable_  gentleman?" Orlov asked, chuckling. His tone grew more insistent and desperate. "Come on now."

Mordecai set his jaw. A relevant portion of Sweet's directives for this job came to mind:

_Apparently this Orlov fellow has a list of buyers a mile long and doesn't sell to anyone he doesn't like. It's practically an audition. You'll have to charm him in order to get to the showroom. Leave the charm to Totsy. All you'll have to do is smile and nod._

The rarities dealer watched them hungrily, and that hunger was for neither a smile nor a nod.

Mordecai took a swig of his whiskey, then locked eyes with Innochka.

It was time to do their job.

**000**

After the impromtu fashion show in the cabin the previous afternoon they'd compared notes, insofar as they could. Mordecai's instructions were written in English by Sweet and Innochka's in Russian by her employer.

"I'm taking it at the interpreter's word that they say the same thing," Sweet had said when he handed him the envelope.

Mordecai looked up at Sweet in dismay. "Thank you for enlightening me to the horrifying possibility that they don't," he said.

"Have a look at hers. You learned a little bit of Russian for Totsy, didn't you?"

Mordecai paused. "How did you know about that?"

"You've been carrying that little white English to Russian phrasebook around," Sweet said. "It's charming."

Mordecai rolled his eyes. "Mr. Sweet, I'm getting very tired of these insinuations that my admiration of Innochka is anything other than professional in nature. Frankly - "

"-and it's something a consumate professional like yourself would do," Sweet finished. "Here's your train tickets. Find a pair of rings."

**ooo**

They gave the act a test round in the dining car. Mordecai waited outside their cabin while Innochka changed, but he hadn't been expecting her to change so completely. In the space of the five minutes she'd become a pigeon-toed, bookish university student gazing wide-eyed up at Mordecai like he was the single greatest thing she'd ever seen

"Hi Max," she said, grinning, and leapt upon his arm.

Mordecai blinked. "Hi ….you."

"Love you so," she said, looking up at him with big doe eyes. Julita even seemed  _shorter_  than Innochka somehow.

"And... I you," Mordecai managed. "Shall we?"

Julita nodded enthusiastically. "Mmm-hmm!"

Mordecai gradually found himself drawn in by her act. He talked about economics over dinner, as he assumed Max Goldwine the banker would, and Julita responded with a fascination he found compelling even knowing it was false. She couldn't possibly understand what he said but she was skilled at looking like she did. She nodded where it was appropriate to nod, smiled when his tone changed for the positive, encouraged him to continue if he paused for too long.

"Go on, go on," she said, reaching across the table to pat his hand.

"It really  _is_  fascinating, isn't it?" he said, then continued explaining his views on economic interventionism. "Now the main area of concern for the Birmingham School of economics is that of  _underconsumption_ ," he began, but was interrupted by a plate of fish.

"Here you are, sir. Enjoy."

"Oh. Thank you," Mordecai said. He paused. "I don't remember ordering, do you?" he asked her. The fish was gray and swam in an unconvincing white sauce. Mordecai poked his with his fork. "Well. This does not look promising. This is a mistake, I wouldn't order fish on a train. Sorry about that, Julita dear, I'll – oh, hello again."

Julita had vanished. Innochka looked skeptically at the fish.

"Welcome back," Mordecai said. "Culinary injustice summons the host, I see."

"What is?" she asked. She gingerly nudged her meal with her fork and winced.

"A mistake," Mordecai said, looking around for their waiter.

"Is – Is - " Innochka said, jabbing her hand at the plate. "I – I find word," she said, and took the little white book out of her purse.

"That's mine," Mordecai said.

"I use," she replied, flipping through the pages.

"Clearly. This isn't communism, Innochka, there's a thing called theft here."

"Is this. Расточительно," she said, turning the book around so he could see the word she pointed to.

 _Wasteful_.

"Мой отец - eh, my father - " she continued, and started flipping madly through the little white book. "Uh – my father – I cook for. If I cook  _this_  - " she pointed at the fish, "he slap me. Whap!"

"Your father felt very strongly about presentation," Mordecai replied. "A noble cause. I was told your father was a butcher, is that correct?"

The waiter suddenly appeared. "Hi there - I'm sorry – I don't believe these are yours," he said brightly, pointing at the fish.

"Took you long enough," Mordecai replied, "This looks like an industrial accident that somehow involved cod."

The waiter gave a grim, gallows laugh as he collected the offending plates. "Yes sir, I agree. And I suggest the Coq au Vin, it's the only thing the chef doesn't destroy on contact."

Mordecai nodded. "Two Coq au Vin it is. Do they pay you to be that honest?"

"It's more that they don't pay me enough to lie, sir. Are you done with your menu? Thanks."

When the waiter left Mordecai found himself sitting across from Julita once more, a transition so sudden and complete Mordecai had to look twice. She smiled dreamily, resting her hand in her chin, her other hand drawing circles on the tablecloth as she gazed at her Max.

"Now you're overdoing it," he said.

Julita beamed. Being in the blinding footlights of her credulous, flat admiration began to wear on him.

"All right. Time for Julita to go away now," he said.

"Eh?"

He drew a line across his throat. "No Julita. Innochka please."

"Ah," she said, and dropped the act. The switchover was fast, like the strings of a marionette being cut. She blinked and her eyes became hard. Her complete focus on Mordecai snapped off like a light. Innochka glanced out the window, unimpressed by the the view.

Mordecai flinched. "That is incredibly unnerving. How do you do that?"

She raised her eyebrows. "Hm?"

"That, the..." he gestured to his face, his eyes. "Julita."

"Act," Innochka said.

"Yes, I know you're acting, I'm wondering - I'm trying to ask how – how you - " he stammered, at a loss. He suddenly had no real idea what it was he wanted to know.

"I act," she said. "But … but no sing," she said, looking pained somehow.

He frowned. "Well as best I know there's no singing required on this venture," Mordecai said. "Unless your instructions said something mine didn't."

As it turned out the Coq au Vin was acceptable. After dinner neither seemed eager to return to the small cabin, so they accepted the waiter's suggestion to have a look at the lounge car. It was an invitingly sleepy space, all candlelight and red velvet seats. An admirably compact stand-up piano was bolted to the wall, which someone in a uniform played. A couple attempted to dance in the small space before it. When Innochka saw this she stopped, turned, and was Julita. She smiled and pulled Mordecai towards the dance floor.

"Um, no. No thank you," Mordecai said, pulling her back.

"No dance?"

He shook his head. "No."

She smiled sweetly. "Ok Max."

"Why are you Julita again?" he whispered.

"We prepare." She whispered back.

She led him to the window and pointed to an oddly shaped boat on the river. "Max? Is gunboat?"

"Gunboat?"

"Is – boat? With gun?" she began, but seemed to think better of trying to explain. Instead she asked about the passing scenery, and Mordecai identified what he could for her as it went by. There was something relaxing about vocally categorizing the evolving landscape, like playing an easy game. She pressed close to his side, nodding along, her head against his upper arm. That was fine until at one point she turned and wrapped her arms around him, resting her head on his chest. She sighed. Her hair had a rich, sweet scent to it, like vanilla.

Mordecai froze.

"Mor-ti-kai?" Innochka whispered. "You are ok?"

"I'm - " he began, but found himself unable to define what he was experiencing. He usually found sudden and intimate contact to be deeply unpleasant, but to his great alarm he found that familiar revulsion missing now. It was as though Innochka somehow slid past all his human proximity alarms without setting a single one off.

"Something's wrong," he whispered. "My heart rate just climbed dramatically,"

"Hm?"

He could feel the warm vibration her voice. A wave of light-headedness washed over him that would quickly become overwhelming if she didn't release him.

"Please let go," he whispered, pushing her away.

She stepped back. "You are ok?" she whispered, concerned.

He smoothed his suit. "I'm - I'm fine, thank you."

Her concern lasted for another long moment before she nodded and turned back towards the window. He closed his eyes for a long moment in relief. Bless her blessed professionalism. What a relief it was to work with someone who didn't take amusement in his discomfort.

He watched the reflections of the people in the room. The couples leaning in towards one another, the dancers swaying together. He looked away. He didn't know how people did it, how they could enjoy being touched like that all the time. People everywhere, always touching one another, embracing and dancing and kissing. He'd grown up in a two room tenement apartment with his mother, father, and two sisters, and would be content never sharing breathing space with another person again.

Or so he thought.

"Oh Max," Julita said, gazing out at the passing oil refineries. "So beautiful."

"What? Those?" he said amusedly, collecting himself. "Oh yes.  _So_ beautiful."

Innochka blinked as though actually _seeing_  the oil refineries as opposed to whatever idyllic scenery Julita imagined, then stifled laughter. "Shhh," she said, and resumed the act.

**ooo**

They hadn't rehearsed a kiss. He was hoping a kiss could be avoided, but he should have known better. Halfway through dinner Mordecai realized Orlov eyed Max in the same lascivious fashion he eyed Julita.

 _Was_ that _what they meant by "libertine"?_ he wondered in mild disgust. Asa mentioned that term when the two of them went over the details of the job.

"So I found out what all these Russian pirates are doing running artifacts in the deep south," Sweet said. "It's piggybacking on the gun trade. Seems our little group of Russian misfits have Totsy and Dimitri 'on loan' from an operation that runs guns all through eastern Europe and the Americas. These rubes somehow convinced the boss of the gun outfit that artifacts are worth investing some brains and muscle into, so he sent Totsy, Dimitri, and the interpreter along to oversee things. From what I understand their management styles conflict, hence the...I'm going to be nice and say "tension" rather than "total ineptitude."

Mordecai considered this. "That does explain some of their behavior."

"Some, but not all," Sweet said. "Did you manage to get anything out of Totsy?"

"No. And her name is Innochka," Mordecai replied.

Sweet's eyebrows raised as he lit a cigar.

"Right, I keep forgetting," he said. "Anyway. Apparently there is a big antiquities market in New Orleans, which I did not know, and if there's anyone down there who has the cargo it's this - " he turned to glance at a sheet of paper on his desk - " _Grigor Orlov_  fellow. He owns a few fancy auction houses. We need to know who he bought the cargo from. He is not likely to roll over on his sources without persuasion, hence you and Innochka."

"Why the engagement ruse?"

"A loving couple is less suspect than a single man or woman. I think. It just says he 'likes young couples.'"

"Likes' how?"

Sweet shrugged. "I don't know,  _likes_. In order to get him talking you'll need to get him to take you down into the vaults he has beneath his house. That's where he keeps the illegally purloined items for serious buyers. There's a black market showroom of some sort down there that even his security isn't allowed into."

Mordecai raised his eyebrows. "Is that so?"

"I want to know whats in there too. In any case you two need to make nice to the guy to get to it. Orlov thinks your fiancee is just wild about ancient weaponry, so you'll know he has the cargo if there is a sword that says 'Uthbert' on the blade in the showroom. Apparently that's one of ours."

"One of o _urs_?"

"Yes  _ours_. I know you don't particularly care for this operation but we renegotiated a much bigger cut of the take and that sword alone is apparently goddam priceless. Look, just wear your best suit and let her charm him. You don't even have to talk that much. He thinks you're some big deal banker who works with the Rothschilds, so if he asks about your work you can just say you're not at liberty to say."

"Noted."

"You might have to endure a drink or two. Word has it he's a lush and something of a - " he looked at the sheet of paper again, "a  _libertine,_ it says."

"Libertine' in what sense?" Mordecai asked.

"Beats me. But Like I said, leave the charming to your better half. She gets the final say on whether Mr. Orlov dies, but from what I understand it's likely that all you'll have to do is scare the guy."

When the train landed in New Orleans, the first thing they did was book a hotel suite, more for a place to make themselves presentable after a thirty hour train ride than with any intent to spend a night in it. Innochka still looked bleary eyed by the time they got to the suite and he stepped into the washroom for a shower. When he emerged In a bathrobe she had fallen asleep on the bed.

He gingerly poked her shoulder. "Innochka," he said.

"Mm. No," she sleep-muttered.

"We have work to do, Julita dearest." He poked her shoulder again, annoyed. "Julita. Julita Bananas, wake up."

Her eyes finally opened. When she saw him she smiled a huge smile that caught him off guard for how unguarded it was, like when his mother sent him in to wake Rose from a nap.  _She never cries when you do it,_  his mother used to say.  _She adores you._

"Julita  _Banas_ ," she said and yawned. "Not  _bananas_."

"My mistake. Your ablutions await," he said.

As she bathed he dressed. When Innochka emerged from the washroom a sweet, warm fragrance rolled out with her. She shyly tiptoed out of the bedroom into the little living room to dress, closing the bedroom door behind her. He looked in the full-length mirror on the wall next to the open washroom door to make sure he was presentable. He straightened his tie but found himself lingering there. The drowsy, clean humidity and sweet scent made him pause.

He  _liked_ that scent.

It came as something of a shock. He had a very sensitive sense of smell, which, while making portions of his work nearly agonizing, also served as a type of social thermometer: if he could smell even a hint of a person's perfume, clothes, or god forbid  _body_ , he was in all likelihood much too close to them and needed to move away.

Yet this was not the case with her. He didn't mind sharing a small train cabin with her, or standing arm in arm with her for long periods of time. He didn't even entirely mind having her arms around him. She smelled …  _good_.

His mind twisted around that concept for a moment. He'd never thought of a person as a thing that could smell  _good_  before, only  _not bad_. It was curious but welcome given the circumstances, he supposed. He never could have managed this sort of work with Serafine, who wore a rose oil so sickly and cloying he sometimes swore he could taste it in the air.

It probably made the inside of her coffin that much worse.

After the pair were dressed they made their way to the lower Garden District to look for Grigor Orlov's house. It was an absurdly columned and terraced bright mauve Victorian monstrosity not one hundred feet from the banks of the Mississippi river. Mordecai and Innochka sat on a bench in the strip of public greenery across the street, taking turns covertly observing the house with a pair of binoculars. A punnet of strawberries sat between them.

The house had a lot of hubbub of workmen and crates, enough that Mordecai had trouble picking out who was staff and who was security. He eventually identified four outside security, neither of whom concerned him, though it stood to reason there would be more inside. When he put the binoculars down Innochka faced his direction, smiling crookedly at something on the river behind him.

"River boat?" he asked without looking.

She nodded. "Reef-bot," she said, and pointed.

"You smile whenever you see one. They aren't  _that_  impressive."

"I like," she said, watching it. "Is … is happy."

Mordecai took his pocketwatch from his vest to check the time.

"Ah!" Innochka said, pointing at it. "This!"

"Yes, this is your gift," he said. "I'm quite fond of it, thank you. We should be getting back to the room to change, only one and a half hours till dinner." He rose from the bench and offered her his arm. "Julita."

She smiled and took it. "Max."

They began to walk off but he paused. "Don't forget your strawberries."

She picked up the punnet. " _Straw_ berries?" she asked.

His eyebrows raised. "You pronounced that perfectly, well done."

She smiled. "We call it клубника."

He frowned. "Say again?"

"клубника."

"Klobe-neeka," he repeated.

She laughed.

"What?"

"No," she said, patting his hand. "Is good."

**ooo**

He could not for the life of him stop staring at her gown.

That was good, he supposed. That was the point of it. But when she caught him staring in the mirror she gave a him a smug little look.

"What?" he asked, annoyed. "Well excuse me. I've never seen anything like that before in my life."

It was as though someone had wrapped her in cream. The thin metallic silk, a warm shade of pale yellow, clung tightly to her in some places and hung freely in others, yet due to some sort of incomprehensible sorcery of sewing there was not a seam to be found on her anywhere. The fitted, draped fabric made her look like some sort of gold-plated, living Athena. She pulled her hair up into a series of spiraling braids accented with tiny flowers, and painted her eyes in that dramatic fashion women did at night to make themselves look dark and mysterious.

She smoothed the gown in the mirror, turned and looked over her shoulder. The gown was backless to a point that bordered on obscene. "Is French."

"That's what they're wearing in Paris?"

She nodded as she took a necklace out of a box and tried to put it on. "Champs-Elysees. Ah, Ебать!" she said as the necklace slipped from her fingers.

He stepped forward and caught it. "Trouble with the clasp? Here," he said. He draped it around her neck, and set about securing the clasp for her. It was a more in-depth operation than he'd anticipated. The necklace was most definitely real, as the clasp seemed designed to fend off loss, theft, or a man who could crack a safe.

"I'm not sure how anyone expects you to put this on at all, much less put it on behind your back," he said as he finally secured the final stage of the clasp. "The things women manage to figure out in the name of beauty astounds me."

She slipped on Julita's glasses and smiled demurely, having recognized the word "beauty." She touched her fingertips gingerly to the necklace. It was a very flashy golden filigree of pearls and diamonds arranged like flowers winding around a trellis. When he looked closer he saw that at the center of each flower was a tiny grinning skull with bright red ruby eyes. Between that, his grandmother's ring, and the showers of tiny diamonds that hung from her ears she she easily wore the cost of two university educations.

"My goodness, Julita," Mordecai mused. "Aren't I treating  _you_  well."

She turned to him and smiled. She straightened his bowtie and smoothed the lapels of his jacket. "Looks good Max," she said, and took his arm. He looked at the two of them in the mirror, him in his exquisitely made tuxedo and her looking ruinously expensive on his arm. He gave a single nod.

"I look stunning," he said. "Shall we?"

**ooo**

Dinner, though an interminable number of courses, was breathtaking, and to his surprise entirely Kosher. Either Orlov divined his Jewishness from the last name or whomever arranged the meeting knew of his dietary preferences. Either way it was appreciated.

"Is your chef Kosher?" he asked as he cut into a perfectly cooked game hen with exquisitely seared, crisp brown skin. There had been some sort of amazing mushroom pastry, then lamb moussaka, and baked dates in a sauce made from, as best Mordecai could tell, the tears of angels. It was enough to make him regret possibly murdering the man later.

"No, just talented," Orlov said, sipping his wine. He was heavyset, with slick black hair and a mustache. He wore an extremely loud vest and generally looked like a person who Mordecai imagined would own an obnoxious mauve house. Thankfully the inside was a fair bit more pleasing than the outside. The floors were stone, the furniture from a mind-boggling variety of time periods, and the walls coated in paintings, fossils, tribal masks, and carvings. Everywhere Mordecai looked his gaze rested on something interesting – and it needed to, considering the amount of time Julita and Orlov spent chatting in Russian about antiquities.

Mordecai watched her, bemused to see how the "Julita" act worked on normal men. Orlov went on and on as she focused all her attention on him, nodding and laughing and gasping as though whatever he was saying was the best, funniest, most thoughtful thing she'd ever heard. When she did speak it was always softly and never for long, but whatever she said clearly enchanted him. When Orlov grew boisterous she drew coyly into herself and batted her eyelashes, turning towards Mordecai as if to shield herself from Orlov's attentions. When she did this she glanced up to meet Mordecai's eyes, smirked, and blinked slowly. He smirked and blinked slowly back. In that moment they were a pair of predators, secretly gloating over their shared prey. He felt a rush of something he couldn't name, but it was electric, and it was  _good_.

She turned back to Orlov, giggled and hid behind her hand. Orlov patted her knee. Something about that rubbed Mordecai the wrong way. He began to wonder if he shouldn't be more protective of his supposed fiance. Just then Orlov glanced at Mordecai and flinched.

"Ah, but let's not leave out the man of the hour!" Orlov said suddenly.

Mordecai realized he'd been scowling at Orlov. "Yes, let's not," he said.

"You must teach him more Russian, my dear, " Orlov said, sipping his wine.

Julita turned and pouted when she saw his face. "Oh, Max!" she said. She tilted her head adoringly and patted his cheek, then intertwined her arm with his and took his hand. As she rested her head on his shoulder Mordecai caught the sweetest hint of vanilla in the air.

"I in no way blame you," Orlov said, chuckling. "I'd be protective of such a delightful gem as well. I, too, would spare no expense to win the heart of such an absolutely exquisite woman."

Mordecai's gaze fell on his grandmother's ring, still triumphant on her finger. The tiny diamond sparkled. "She is indeed something. That's why I'm marrying her," he replied.

Orlov turned to Innochka. "What a dashing fellow, bring you all the way here from New York for a little shopping trip. You should give him a kiss. That deserves at least a _little_  kiss. No? Not even a little one?"

When she looked blankly at him Orlov spoke to her in Russian.

Julita giggled shyly. "Nyet, nyet," she said.

Orlov leaned in close to her. ""Тогда придите! Живешь только раз. Там нет ограничений на поцелуи для вашего красивый муж-к-быть."

She turned to Mordecai and bit her lip. With a sudden resolute quality she pressed her lips to his cheek. It was just a short peck, but firm and warm. He flinched.

"Ah," Mordecai said in surprise, then cleared his throat.

"That's it? That's all he gets?"

Julita nodded, blushing.

"Mr. Orlov-" Mordecai began warningly.

"Forgive me, I'm a sad old man flummoxed by you two beautiful things. Oh, to be  _young_  and  _in love_  and and have time to  _waste_ ," Orlov moaned as he poured wine. When Mordecai abstained Patron eyed him carefully. "Come on now. No one's that good. No kisses, no wine? You've got a 1874 Bordeaux in one hand and a beautiful woman on the other, no one is strong enough not to indulge in at least one."

 _I'll indulge in kisses and wine on my own terms, thank you_ , Mordecai began to say, but perhaps Orlov had a point. Perhaps his refusal to at least appear to enjoy this was a tell. It seemed like something Sweet would say was a tell. He had no idea what Atlas would say, as Atlas never would have sent him on an assignment like this. The only other person who might have insight into this was Mitzi, and she always advised him not to work too hard.

Mordecai forced a smile. "Cheers," he said, and sipped the wine. "1874, you said?"

Patron watched him with barely suppressed suspicion. Mordecai took another sip of the wine, paying attention to the taste. In one fell swoop he was blessed with a deal-closing, suspicion-obliterating phrase too saccharine and cloying to be anything he would ever lay claim to in the light of day, but in the present circumstances he was damn near proud of himself.

He made a great show of holding the wine up to the light.

"A lovely wine. Sweet, and then bitter," Mordecai said. "Just like young love."

"Yes, yes! Ha!" Orlov said, clapping him on the shoulder. "That's the spirit! Who knew we had a poet on our hands, eh? Oh, Julita dear, I see why you love Max so. A cool exterior, but a romantic at heart."

"You've got me dead to rights," Mordecai said smoothly, drinking the wine. Innochka looked up at him, her eyes bright, as if to say  _I don't know what you did, but you did it well._  She squeezed his arm encouragingly. Emboldened, he took her hand and kissed it, quickly and casually, the way he'd seen Atlas kiss Mitzi's.

Innochka grinned.

"You'll make some truly stunning babies. Ah, the best of health and wealth to the both of you beautiful young darlings!" Orlov said, and raised his wine glass. "Mazel tov, mazel tov." They toasted, and Orlov continued. "Now, with your permission, sir, I'll ask if the lady would like a brief tour of the weapons gallery while you and I discuss matters unfit for such lovely ears. Yes?"

"Certainly," Mordecai said.

Orlov said something to Innohka in Russian to which she nodded enthusiastically. Orlov summoned a butler. "Please show the lady the weapons gallery and answer any questions she may have."

"Of course," the butler said. "Miss?"

Julita rose from her seat, biting her lip, looking so excited she could barely contain herself. "Okay, bye Max," she said, which for some reason made Orlov laugh. She took the butler's arm and allowed him to escort her out. "I love you Max!" she called from the hallway, which made Orlov laugh even harder. He shook his head, turning to Mordecai, who was still not impressed.

"Ah, forgive me my impropriety. I am but an old man, and she is ... just lovely. You know," he began, filling Morecai's wine glass, "I had the chance to marry a woman like that once, when I was young and beautiful, but I was stupid and let her slip away. It's the biggest regret of my life, so don't make my mistake. Man to man, you take that woman and you marry her. You marry the hot hell out of her and you do whatever it is you need to do to make sure you marry her."

Mordecai gingerly sipped the wine. "That's the plan, Grigor."

He nodded. "Good. Though I can't say you're running much of a risk of losing her, she adores you. Speaks to high heaven about you."

"Does she?"

"Oh yes." He leaned in conspiratorially and winked. "Would you like to know what she said?"

Mordecai paused, then smiled slightly. "Yes. Yes I would."

"She said – now give me a moment, let me translate this correctly," he began, and paused for a beat before continuing. "She said 'he is a blade so beautiful he could not help but pierce my heart." Orlov sighed. "This from a woman who loves weapons, my friend."

Mordecai averted his eyes and barely suppressed a smile.

"Ah! Ha ha!" Orlov said. "There it is. You're a lucky lucky man, Max. Now then, let's get down to brass tacks, shall we?" He waved another butler over, who set a tray with a heavy crystal bottle and two glasses down between them. "Cognac, from my private reserve," Orlov said, pouring them each a glass.

"Thank you," Mordecai said as he accepted it. He wondered how long he could mime sipping at it before Orlov noticed the level wasn't going down.

"Tell me what you think," Orlov said eagerly.

Apparently, not long. Mordecai took a sip of the cognac and tried not to wince.  _I think it's like being punched in the mouth with grout remover,_  he longed to say, but instead he said, "Lovely. Now, what are these brass tacks you speak of?"

He smiled. "You're direct, I like that. My gorgeous friend, I have in my possession a truly heart-piercing blade. Something so rare, and so precious, that most collectors would be thrilled to stand in the same room as one, much less have it for their very own. Of course, most collectors do not have the resources, or the … shall I say  _discretion_ , such a purchase requires."

"Discretion in what sense?"

Orlov considered his words carefully. "In the sense that such rarities need to be held in a degree of secrecy due to the nature of their acquisition."

Mordecai nodded slowly. "I see. If you are asking if I'm interested in such wares, I am."

Orlov smiled. "Very good, sir," he said, and held his glass out to toast.

**ooo**

There were, to Mordecai's knowledge, three security guards in the residence. One by the front door, one stationed outside the dining room, and one that seemed to follow the three of them everywhere, but he was swiftly growing so befuddled with alcohol that he was starting to seriously question his ability to take them out if needed. He looked for water in every room they went through on this after-dinner romp through Orlov's collection of rarities.

"And that's – well I think that's the last room," Orlov said tipsily. He carried the crystal cognac bottle with them and took to refilling their three glasses at every opportunity. "You saw the mask room, right?"

"Twice," Mordecai said.

"Right," Orlov said. "Right then. I think – I think it's time. Come along, pretty things, come along with me now," he said, gesturing for them to follow. He led them down a long hallway, the guard following at fifteen paces. They stopped in the middle of the hall before a blank wall. Orlov found a tiny panel in the wall, all but invisible, and slid it aside to reveal a keyhole. Then he turned and looked at them for a moment, his eyes shining.

"Look at this girl, Max," Orlov said, gesturing to Innochka. "Look at this  _woman."_

Mordecai looked at her.

"Isn't - isn't she stunning?" Orlov asked drunkenly.

She gave Mordecai that secret predator's smile. The diamonds dripping from her ears sparkled in the candlelight.

"She is," Mordecai said.

"So give her a little kiss," Grigor Orlov said. "Can't you see how badly she wants you to kiss her?"

**ooo**

With a kiss standing between them and their mission objective, and alcohol clouding his brain, Mordecai did what he reasoned to be the purely professional thing and stepped forward to draw Innochka close to him. _Be like Atlas,_  Sweet had said, but Mordecai drew a blank. Innochka must have seen the panic in his eyes, because she rose up, whispered " _Is okay,_ " and tilted her face up to his. He closed his eyes. Their lips met softly.

He froze.

He hadn't known what to expect but it wasn't this. His aversion was held at bay by the startling intelligence and delicacy with which her lips touched his, a contact ginger enough to look convincing yet still defer to his boundaries. It was professional and it was skilled, but above all it was  _astoundingly_  respectful.

Something in him subdued, went calm and warm, melted. He relaxed, but the barely-kiss hung between them like an unfinished sentence. Feeling Orlov's eyes on them, Mordecai held his breath, placed his hand on her waist, and tilted his mouth against hers. She responded like a coiled spring and wrapped her arms around his neck, finishing the sentence, the kiss suddenly alive and engaged and real. He caught her rich sweet scent and a large portion of his awareness of anything but that scent dropped away.

He didn't miss it.

Without his permission the world unexpectedly narrowed to the points of contact between them, an amount the basest part of his mind ruled  _not enough_.He clutched her. She cupped his face and renewed the kiss, their lips touching in an entirely different way. Mordecai gasped softly and dropped his whiskey. The glass hitting the stone floor made the three of them startle.

Mr. Patron chuckled. "Well well well! That's how you know it's a good kiss," he said, rustling his keys.

"Sorry - " Mordecai began to apologize for the glass, now rolling away, but Innochka still clung to him. He found himself dizzy with an urgency to continue on kissing her. With breathless surprise he noted the urgency was strong enough that he had to consciously pull away and focus on Mr. Orlov.

He seemed satisfied with the performance.

"All right you two beautiful young things," Orlov said ruefully. "Prepare yourselves for wonders, Romeo and  _Julita!_ "

Their offering given, Orlov turned the key, and the secret door the to vaults slid open.

**ooo**


	12. work ethic

_Though I am unsure if I need to, I feel I must do the responsible thing and say trigger warning: violence. This gets kinda ugly._

**chapter twelve**

**work ethic**

The antiquities dealer spat a tooth across the floor of the showroom and looked up at Innochka in shock.

"Give  _that_  a little kiss, Grigor," Mordecai said, feeling oddly buoyant.

She'd struck him across the mouth with the butt of a pistol she seemingly produced from nowhere. Trying to reason where, exactly, against her body she'd managed to hide a sidearm seemed to make Modecai's curiously lightheaded condition worse. This condition was something he had the luxury to muse upon, spectator as he seemed to be in this portion of the day's work.

Innochka took to breaking Orlov with an admirable tenacity. A high heel to the groin and kneecap followed by some harsh words in Russian got him to start talking, and the pistol-whipping encouraged him to keep talking. Orlov was twice her size and his hands were free but he was too terrified to lift a finger to defend himself. Every time he seemed to consider it he glanced at Mordecai, who paced nearby and watched the proceedings with a cold, smug satisfaction, like a trainer with his attack dog.

"Were you somehow under the impression that she's fooling around, Mr. Orlov?" Mordecai asked. "Are you  _still_  unaware of the danger you're in?"

"It's there," Orlov said, spitting blood. He weakly lifted his arm to point to a curtain. "Behind there."

"What is?"

Orlov shut his eyes. Blood dribbled down his chin. He pointed to one of the three curtains that obscured the showroom walls. "The storeroom. It has your cargo in it. The whole shipment. The combination to the door is thirty four, fifty six, eight."

Mordecai nodded. He pushed the curtain aside to see a padlock on the door. "Thank you for your cooperation," he said. "Am I to trust that this door doesn't trip any alarms?"

"It doesn't," Orlov whispered.

Mordecai reached for his gun before remembering that he didn't have it, as it was made clear in his instructions he would be searched at the door. Innochka's dress left little enough to the imagination that the guard hadn't bothered, though it was clear he'd have liked to. At the time Mordecai had taken her arm and indulged himself in a smug smile when the guard's expression grew sour. Everything about this job with her had left him with a hypnotic heat in chest, a heat that started … well, that started upstairs. Before.

It had set him ringing like a bell.

He was somewhat stupefied when Orlov opened the secret door and led them downstairs to the showroom, unsure what the hell had just happened to him. The  _whole world_  vanished for a moment, had shrunk down to just her. He had to force himself back to the present like she was a particularly good book he'd been asked to look up from. Orlov hacked loudly and Mordecai suddenly snapped to attention yet again, surprised how far his mind had wandered merely recalling it. He quickly cleared his throat and reached into his vest pocket to produce a onyx handled switchblade, sharp and thin as a scalpel. He turned to Orlov and twirled it in his fingers.

"This little knife cuts through flesh like butter. If an alarm goes off, so do parts of your face."

Orlov nodded, eyes shut. Mordecai set to the combination lock. He was always thankful for people that broke quickly They were easy work. There was nothing worse than some holdout hero taking the most painful route possible to the grave, and Mordecai's job didn't exactly pay overtime.

He unlocked the door to reveal a long, narrow corridor filled with crates of all shapes and sizes. This clearly was not just their cargo, but quite a few shipments. Mordecai took a folded inventory out of his jacket pocket and sighed. He hoped, at the very least, the related crates were stored close to one another, or else this could take all night. Mordecai made his way down the corridor briefly scanning whatever labels he could find.

Orlov screamed.

Mordecai did not pay it much mind till he screamed again and he heard Innochka snarling angrily. Her angry snarls usually formed themselves around the hair-pin curves and squared off shapes of the Russian language, but now and again her voice melted into itself for a moment into what Mordecai felt was Spanish _._ When Orlov whimpered something back it also contained this Spanish phrase. Their exchange grew heated for a moment, but then Orlov gave a shriek of the kind that indicated harm done to the genitalia. After that they settled and Mordecai returned to his inventory for a few minutes.

"Max Goldwine! Max Goldwine!" Orlov screamed again.

Innochka shouted something at Orlov. Mordecai tilted his head. Should he go in? It seemed she may be in need of assistance, but Mordecai did not want to condescend to her by walking in with that assumption. He decided to stroll casually into the room as though he'd been called to an early dinner and not a prolonged shakedown.

"Something troubling you, Grigor?" he asked, picking a tiny ball of fluff from his sleeve.

Half of his careful sculpted mustache had been ripped out. He gasped and sputtered on the floor. "You don't know - you don't know what's actually - what she's- !"

Innochka twisted her hand into Orlov's hair and cracked his head against the wall, shoving her tiny pistol up into his chin. Orlov made a high-pitched sound of terror. Mordecai shook his head and adjusted his cufflinks. "I appreciate your concern but I assure you I know everything I need to know. Sadly I cannot say as much for Julita, so I suggest you pick a language and start talking."

"But it isn't - !"

"Перестаньте говорить с ним," Innochka hissed at Orlov, who flinched. "Он не собирается, чтобы помочь вам!"

"Before you  _anger_  her, Mr. Orlov."

"Перестаньте говорить с ним и начать говорить со мной!" Innochka growled into his face, shoving the pistol hard against his temple.

"I - I don't know anything! Я не знаю! Я не знаю! я не знаю!" he shrieked, covering his face with his hands. Innochka tore them away as he continued blubbering. "I'm not even supposed to know about it! I don't- "

"- run your business on much more than blissful ignorance?" Mordecai said, examining his nails. "Don't tell me, tell her."

"Please," Orlov sobbed. "Please! You don't understand! You don't understand, they'll kill her!"

"Kill who?"

Orlov closed his eyes. Mordecai glanced at Innochka. Her face was blank.

"They'll kill  _who_ , Mr. Orlov?" he demanded.

"My daughter," he whispered, defeated.

"I see. Well that does put you in a bit of a bind, doesn't it? T _hey_ will kill your  _daughter_ later, but if you don't start talking  _Julita_ will kill  _you_ now. You don't think she'll kill you?" He turned to her, formal and official. "Julita!"

Innochka snapped to attention. She met his eyes over her shoulder and nodded. For a moment Mordecai was perplexed, until he found himself imagining her saying two words:

_Yes, sir?_

With a certain breathlessness he realized she was waiting on an order he'd unintentionally positioned himself to give. She waited to read her next move in his voice and tone, a wild animal willingly submitting herself to his control.

Allowing him to use her as a weapon.

A deep, pleasant, and utterly distracting ache began curl up within him. He tried to say something but it made speaking difficult. He swallowed and cleared his throat. "Well I - I don't know what to tell you, darling," he finally managed to say to her, gesturing to Orlov and shaking his head. "He doesn't think you're serious."

She gazed over her shoulder at him at smiled. "Oh Max," she sighed dreamily, and grabbed Orlov's collar. He started screaming, so she brought the butt of her pistol down on Orlov's screaming face once, then again, and on the third strike Orlov's eye socket crunched. Orlov retched and attempted to curl up into a ball, but Innochka held him against the wall by his hair and turned to Modecai to await her next order, the strap of her gown falling off her shoulder. She blew a stray strand of hair out her face and grinned at him.

He blinked. He stared at her for a long moment before he came back to himself and remembered it was time to make thoughts happen again, but whatever words ambled stupidly down from his brain turned to oatmeal as soon as they hit his mouth. She waited on him.

"That - good," he finally said. "That was good. I mean good work."

She nodded. He forced himself to look away from her, focused, and turned to Orlov.

"So!" he said, brushing off his jacket. "Are you ready to tell the lady what she wants to know, or would you like to move up to the next level with her?" Mordecai asked. Orlov shut his eyes tightly, sobbing. "I wouldn't blame you. Her ministrations are clearly of the utmost quality and you do have an appreciation for the finer things."

She smiled at Mordecai, inferring something complimentary in his tone. He smiled back.

"You know, as a matter of fact I'd be interested to see what else she has in her repertoire, Grigor. Would you mind?" He gave Innochka a single firm nod. "Julita, sick."

Orlov cried out, bringing his arm up to shield himself. She grabbed the offending limb, twisted it out straight, and brought her knee down hard on his elbow. After a moment of resistance his arm broke with a sickening crack, enough to make Mordecai flinch. Orlov began shrieking in a high-pitched and infantile manner. She put a quick end to that, hitting him across the mouth with the pistol again before shoving it up under his chin, growling her request in Russian.

He broke.

He quavered in hysterical pain, screaming whatever she wanted to know up into her face. Mordecai hung back and watched her work. The more Orlov talked the calmer Innochka grew, until she asked her questions in a soft, almost mothering tone, her words brushing softly against one another. Orlov's answers started coming in childlike sobs. Innochka made soothing sounds and wiped his tears away with a cream-colored handkerchief she produced from between her breasts, but didn't let up on the pressure of the barrel under his chin for an instant.

"Well. You seem to have things under control here," Mordecai finally said, lightheaded and burning. He took the inventory sheet out of his pocket. "I'll get back to this."

She jerked her chin up at Mordecai but never took her eyes off Orlov. "Yah."

He slipped past the metal door and walked the length of the storage space. Once he was near the back he took a moment to lean against the wall and attempt a proper de-fuzzing of his brain. It was not easy. Whatever this new thing was it was powerful and seemed to demand a lot of his attention. He kept seeing her in his head, all of her, parts of her, insistent images that somehow seemed to come more from his body than his mind. It was a thing he associated with deep fear, with instinct trying to grapple logic to the ground, but he did not feel afraid now. He felt raw and melting and uneasy, but in a way he had a bizarre desire to  _perpetuate_  somehow. It was curious, but whatever it was it would have to wait while there was work to be done. He wrestled himself back from that compellingly soft precipice and breathed, focusing on the inventory sheet, the crates.

After a while he frowned. It appeared the relevant crates were not, in fact, arranged together, but that the corridor was cobbled together like a puzzle. Without much room Orlov had to manage to make everything fit somehow. Mordecai wondered how many beautiful and priceless things spent years in this damp hole.

He raised his eyebrows.

What, he wondered, was the  _estimated net worth_  of this damp hole?

He took a step back, studied the length of the corridor, and sank into some quick math. He was drawing numbers in the air with his index finger when the shouting started again.

"Max Goldwine!" Orlov shouted, his voice raw with an as-yet-unheard level of fear. "Max Goldwine! You don't understand what- !"

A gunshot rang out, loud enough in the echoing corridor that Mordecai startled and nearly tripped over his own feet.

"Innochka?" he shouted, racing for the showroom. He found her standing over Orlov, or what was left of Orlov, as a good portion of him from the nose up was sprayed across the blue velvet curtain. She slowly lowered the gun to her side.

"Was that necessary?" Mordecai asked her.

She stared down at the body with wide eyes as though she was unsure what had just happened.

"Innochka!" Mordecai insisted.

She blinked. Looked up at him.

"Did you need to do that? I thought termination was a final resort. You realize this means we have to do the whole house now, there's three guards still on the premises." He studied her for a moment. "Did you intend to complete him?"

I - " she began. "He – he is - " She opened and closed her free hand. "You – you have book?"

"I do - " he, said, taking out his pocketwatch to glance at it, "but we don't have time to sit around interpret the details. The sooner we get the moving crew in and out of here the better. I'm sure you did whatever you needed to do, you are a professional and I was told you had the final say in the matter. Impressive performance, really. I take it you got what you needed?"

She tilted her head at him, not understanding. "Eh?"

"Nevermind. You may have made extra work for us, but seeing as you more or less conducted that entire interview by yourself please allow me to pull my weight. Here," he said, handing her the inventory sheet. "You do this. Give me your tiny gun."

**000**

"Here's what's going to happen," Mordecai hissed into the ear of one of the guards, holding Innochka's amusingly girly mother-of-pearl handled pistol hard into his neck. The man was middle aged, paunchy and soft from years of a job where nothing interesting ever happened until one night something did -and it involved seeing the left side of his fellow guard's face blown off.

"Stop blubbering, you're a grown man," Mordecai scolded. "Now listen to me. You are going to open this kitchen door and tell the chef he is to pack up his knives and leave at once. You will give absolutely no indication that anything is amiss. Do well and I'll let you live. Slip up and I'll kill you both. I want that chef out of here  _now_ , is that clear?"

"Yes - yes sir," the guard breathed.

"Good." Mordecai pressed the gun to the small of his back. "Now move."

The guard opened the kitchen door. He was quite a bit larger than Mordecai, which allowed him to effectively hide from the chef, who had seen neither himself nor Innochka and was therefore not much of a witness to the night's events. If he'd wanted to make things easier for himself Mordecai could have just cleaned the house and thrown the chef onto the pile.

But that perfectly seared game hen, those baked dates?

No.

No, a man had to have standards in this world. The line had to be drawn  _somewhere_. Mordecai could not bring himself to destroy such talent for the sake of streamlining his workflow, not on a night like this.

He frowned.

But what was it this night was like?

The guard attempted to fulfill his assignment with admirable dedication, but it was clear the chef caught a whiff something was amiss from the speed at which he collected his things and made himself scarce. The guard remained perfectly still in the kitchen doorway.

"Sir?" he asked.

"Yes?" Mordecai replied, annoyed. He hadn't said the guard could speak.

"May -may I - go?"

"Turn around."

The guard turned. His eyes, Mordecai noticed, were bright blue.

"Yes," Mordecai said, and pressed the gun between them.

That done, he located a telephone, called the number he'd been given, let it ring three times, and hung up. This was the signal for the cargo ship to start making its way downriver to Orlov's loading dock. It would arrive in approximately thirty minutes. That gave the two of them thirty minutes to dispose of the bodies -easy work next to the Mississippi - and then…?

Then what?

The plan as he knew it ended at the moving crew, but the two of them still had belongings at the hotel and the last train back to St. Louis was long gone. Not knowing how long it would take to complete their work no other arrangements had been made for that night. Mordecai considered this. Something to eat might be in order by that time? He and Viktor used to stop for food after jobs quite a bit. There had to be some decent restaurants open late in the French Quarter.

He paused for a moment, casting around. Somewhere in this mansion full of heavy things there had to be a dolly. There had to be at least seventeen, if not up here then back downstairs, and really he may as well check up on her anyway. With luck she was still doing the inventory and he could shovel Orlov's fat husk into the river for her, spare her more blood on that French silk wrapping of hers. He had two more tuxedos exactly like the one he wore, but that dress was clearly unique, clearly something she treasured. It was something she brought with her from Paris though there couldn't have been occasion to wear it more than once or twice. But the woman had her priorities straight and did what the job called for, even if it meant ruining her beautiful dress. True, what was a fancy dress compared to hundreds of thousands in recovered antiquities, but even Mordecai would be hard pressed to be so unsentimental about a beloved object.

He pressed his hand to the pocketwatch hanging from his waistcoat and smiled softly.

She really had such wonderfully admirable …

He might have fallen softly into composing that list of qualities, but realized he'd stopped looking for a dolly and instead elected to stand in one place thinking while there was work to be done.

His eyes went wide in shock. "I - just - " Mordecai muttered softly to himself in the quiet hall, aghast. He put his hand to his forehead. She was down there working and here he was slacking off! He shut his eyes tight scratched the visions of her face from his mind, stamped them out and replaced them with what she had that was truly admirable:

Work ethic.

**000**

He took a cursory glance in a mirror before heading back down to the showroom.

"Julita!" he called as he descended the dark, narrow stairs, figuring it would be better to let her know he was coming so as not to startle her. When he arrived he saw that Orlov had not been moved, but the velvet curtains had been ripped down to reveal a previously unseen door. Inside was a staircase heading up. A light was on in the room at the top of the stairs. He heard the sound of drawers and rustling papers.

"Julita?" he called.

There was a long pause. "Ya?" she called back.

"What are you doing up there?"

The rustling stopped. She came to the head of the stairs. In her hand was a folder full of papers. She looked wide-eyed and harried.

"I look for- ah - document," she said.

"Do you need help?

She seemed surprised he offered. "No. Is…" she glanced at the room, then put the folder down on some surface beyond the door. "Is okay." She came down the stairs, stopping at the one directly above him. "Orlov, we do in river, yes?"

He shook his head. "No,  _I_  do in river." He gestured back up to the room. "You keep on with what you're doing. Documents."

She quirked her head. "Eh?"

"Go. Go on, off with you." He gestured up the stairs, then to Orlov. "I'll tend to it."

Her eyebrows raised. "You are sure with this?"

"I am. Shoo."

She smiled down at him. "Thank you Max," she said. "You are nice."

"It's nothing," he said, gazing up at her. "Happy to help."

Something passed between them. Mordecai suddenly thought of the kiss from earlier and how hungry he'd been to continue it. He felt a bit of that now with her standing so close to him in the dim light, but he had no idea what to do about it. His heart sped up. How does one even begin to say  _could we try that again? Because something interesting happened for me back there._

She squeezed his shoulder, then pecked him on the cheek and turned back up the stairs. When she reached the top she glanced back down at him with a demure and private smile. He felt himself return it. She went into the room and slammed a drawer open, resuming her search.

"Happy hunting," he said. He lingered for a moment at the bottom of the stairs, then turned on his heel to retrieve a dolly he'd seen in the storeroom.

**000**

It was a lovely night, sweet and warm, and Mordecai was glad to get out into the fresh air for a few minutes, even if those minutes were filled with dumping bodies into the Mississippi. The construction taking place around Orlov's home provided an embarrassment of cinderblocks to help them sink, and he'd even found tarpaulins and a huge, wiry ball of twine sitting on a shelf inside the little boathouse at the base of the dock. He wrapped the bodies in tarpaulin and secured the blocks to their ankles, then waited for the boat. It wouldn't do any good to dump the bodies in the shallow water near the dock. He would have the boat take him out to the deepest part of the river and dump them there.

He sat on the edge of the dock and wiped his brow, then undid his tie and the top two buttons of his shirt. The humidity made him want to lie down and go to sleep, gave everything a rich, surreal, thick haze. The gently lapping water, the fireflies, cattails waving softly in the breeze. When the breeze changed direction it cast a thick waft of heady, musky gardenia scent over him. He took a deep breath and sighed, eyes fluttering shut for a moment.

There was a sudden explosion of light. "Freeze! Hands in the air!"

Mordecai sprung to life, leaping directly upward and landing on his feet in a way that defied gravity, his tail gone straight and bushy. He stumbled over his own feet as he stepped backwards and ended up tumbling over the bodies. The boat of police erupted in laughter, something the part of his mind not gripped in terror noted with irony: they  _would_  be laughing when they finally came for him. He patted around for Innochka's gun. He knew there was at least one bullet left in the chamber, and there was no way way he'd let them take him alive.

The light suddenly flicked away. A familiar voice rang out from the boat. "Ha! Sorry about that, son! Didn't mean to give you that much of a fright!"

Mordecai looked up, heart pounding. "Sweet?

Asa Sweet stood at the helm of the boat - a much larger craft than Mordecai expected - with his hand on a spotlight, the blast of which was now turned away from him. "Mr. Heller isn't much for jokes," he said to the people near him, some of whom laughed, most of whom didn't - and not just because Sweet's jokes were uniformly terrible. The Russian party were looking at the bodies, and they did not look especially pleased. "But he's a good sport, aren't you, Heller?"

Mordecai got to his feet and smoothed his vest down. "Very funny," he said testily.

One of the crew tossed Mordecai a rope from the deck. He tied it to the dock. The Russians were talking urgently among themselves, looking at Mordecai and the bodies. When the boat docked they rushed off ahead of everyone else, save for Dimitri, who lingered for a long moment to glare at Mordecai before following his comrades.

Asa stepped onto the dock next to Mordecai, watching this. "Hmm. What do you make of that?"

"You did say she had the final call if Orlov died?"

"That's what I was told."

Mordecai shook his head. "If they're going to give her the final say they should actually  _give her the final say_ ," he muttered, mostly to himself. He suddenly felt angry for her, for how badly they treated her, for how inconsistent and stubborn and doubting they were. How could they be so blind to what she was? To how smart and skilled and hard-working and valuable she was? Why did they doubt every move she made, ignored her good counsel? She was treated with so little respect yet this Dimitri seemed to feel entitled to her, and she had to be - what did Asa call it?

_A good sport._

Mordecai turned to Asa, fighting a growing indignation. "It would be helpful if I could make use of the boat to dispose of these in the central current," Mordecai said.

"I should be able to arrange that," Asa said, waving him aboard. He ordered a few lackeys to gather up the bodies, a gesture for which Mordecai was grateful. It calmed his indignation somewhat as they untied and the boat moved away from the dock.

"I take it things went well?"

"The cargo was recovered, yes. They should be pleased but it seems one never knows with this group."

Asa nodded and lit up a cigar. "That's for sure. I won't be sorry to see the back of 'em. They're leaving directly from here after they get the cargo loaded up."

Mordecai startled. "They are?"

"Yup. Cuba bound. Hence the big boat, there's living quarters on it."

"All - all of them are leaving now?"

"All of them," Asa said. He paused a moment, studying Mordecai, then lowered his voice. "I take it you've got some goodbyes to say?"

"I - " Mordecai began, looking back at the receding Orlov house. There was a sudden hollow, anxious soreness in his chest. "Yes."

Asa turned to the lackeys, busy lifting the bodies over the side of the boat. "Pick up the pace boys! We don't have all night!"

**000**

It was everything he could do not to go flying over the railing of the boat as soon as the dock was within a distance he could conceivably jump. As soon as he could be pushed past whomever was between himself and the ramp, then past the crates and crew, and back up the dock. The door to the passage that led up to the store room was in a stone wall, outside and around the corner from which was a small courtyard. In this courtyard Dimitri and another Russian stood, smoking and talking angrily. Mordecai managed to slip past them unseen and crept back up the passage to the showroom. The door to the office was still open.

"Innochka?" He called up the little staircase, shutting the door behind him.

"Mordecai!" she said, appearing at the top of the stairs. "Come come!"

He took the stairs two at a time and emerged into the office. She'd torn it apart, filing cabinets emptied onto the floor, but she looked flushed and happy. There was another door to the office at the top of the stairs, which she closed behind the two of them.

"Did you find what you were looking for?"

"Hm?"

"Documents?"

A big smile crossed her face. "Yes."

"Good," he said lightly. "You, uh…you're leaving?"

Her face fell. "We go now. Yah. I … I do not know this. Before."

"Me neither. I thought we'd …" he voice trailed off.

She nodded. They looked searchingly at one another for a long moment, then both looked away.

Innochka smoothed her hair. "Mordecai," she began.

"Yes?"

She looked unsure of what she wished to say. After a moment she seemed to settle on "Thank you."

He smiled slightly. "For what?"

"For, ah…" she made a broad gesture. "For … everything. With job."

"Oh! Well … well no, thank you, it's been a pleasure to work with you. Um," he quickly tried to simplify when he saw he'd hit the limit of her English comprehension. "Thank  _you_  for everything with job."

She smiled. "You are nice," she said again.

"No. Well. No. You're - you're the - " he stammered, but he fell silent when she put her hand on his cheek and stepped closer to him, looking up into his eyes.

"No," she said softly. "You are nice, Mordecai."

"Thank you," he whispered. "You're - you're also nice."

She smiled and tilted her face to his.

There was a sudden loud, horrible banging on the door. They jumped.

" _Innochka!_ " Dimitri shouted. "Это время, чтобы пойти!"

She tilted her head back and raised her eyes to the ceiling with an exasperated sound. Before Mordecai even realized what he was doing he stalked to the door. He opened it to reveal a red-faced and angry Dimitri, who only became more red faced and angrier to see Mordecai before him.

"Отойди от нее кусок дерьма!" he barked. He rushed up two final stairs at Mordecai and shoved him back hard. Innochka shouted something. Mordecai caught himself before he lost his balance, took one more step back, and steadied himself for the second charge he knew was coming. When Dimitri lunged Mordecai took hold of his collar and pulled him down onto his fist. Mordecai's pulling added to Dimitri's previous inertia broke Dimitri's nose instantly. Blood poured down his face. He cried out and stumbled across the floor holding his nose.

"Убирайся отсюда вы идиот!" Innochka shouted at him, pushing him down onto the staircase. He stumbled and ended up sitting down hard on a stair. She slammed the door and turned to Mordecai, exasperated.

"Why do you do!" she said, gesturing to the door, on the other side of which Dimitri could be heard sputtering.

He straightened his shirt and vest. "Innochka, I'm tired of that man giving you a problem. Frankly - "

Shaking her head, she took two quick steps, cupped his face in her hands, and kissed him. A bolt of adrenaline shut up through him. Caught off guard, he took a sharp breath and froze. He struggled against this instinctual reaction, but it was too late. She pulled away, her eyes wide like she just realized she'd made a huge mistake.

"Oh," she whispered, her face fallen. "Oh. You are not …I am … sorry, Morde- "

In that moment two forces battled within him, one that was repelled by what he suddenly knew he would do and one that urged him breathlessly forward. Time being of the essence - and  _purely,_ he assured himself, in the pursuit of knowledge - he made a conscious decision to override the first and embrace the latter. He brought his hands up to her face, his lips down to hers, and forced himself to focus.

She made a brief startled sound but then went a bit limp and kissed him back, pressing herself to him. She was warm, and suddenly there was her vanilla scent, and that breathless  _forward forward forward_ urge swept over him, only stronger this time. It wasn't until he'd backed her into the desk that he realized he'd actually been moving forward physically as well as in his mind, which was wrapping itself around her as quickly as his arms were, condensing the world down to the combined diameter of their bodies.

On the other side of the door the staircase thumped loudly, like someone had attempted to stand and fallen right back down again. Dimitri sputtered and hacked.

Innochka suddenly pulled away from Mordecai, gasping softly. "I go -" she began, but words were suddenly unimportant next to his all-encompassing compulsion forward. He took her face and kissed her again. She made a helpless sound and kissed him back. They held that way for a long moment before she pressed her palms to his chest and gently pushed, breaking away too suddenly. This loss of contact did nothing to quell Mordecai's forward impuls, but he forced himself to disengage, to be content with the touch of her forehead to his, her soft hand on his cheek.

"Мой принц," she whispered hotly. "Mordecai, mой принц."

"I - I don't know what that means," he whispered back.

Dimitri sneezed and groaned through the door.

"I go," Innochka whispered, panting slightly. "I go now."

"Okay," he replied weakly ,eyelids heavy, fighting the impulse to kiss her again. He stopped fighting the impulse. She kissed him back, this time firmly, with a sense of finality. When they parted she sighed helplessly, her gray eyes shining and heavy like she'd had a drink. Looking at her Mordecai saw something that made his mind ground to a perfect halt, like a car rolling to a stop through deep gravel.

It was the kind of look Mitzi used to give Atlas,  _and Innochka was giving it to him_.

He felt something simple yet monumental slide askew somewhere within him at this realization, as though one of the foundations upon which he'd built his reality had decided to just up and roll on its side, and now everything he'd placed upon it would have to re-shift and re-settle into some new form.

He looked down. Her face took up his entire field of view.

"Goodbye Mordecai," she whispered softly, running the back of her fingers along his cheek.

"Goodbye," he whispered back dizzily.

She stepped away from him, taking his hand and giving it a quick squeeze. He held it until she no longer could, then slipped out the door. He heard her speak harshly to Dimitri, who sputtered and wheezed. Mordecai rushed to the door in case he tried to hurt her, but to his surprise she was helping him up even as she snarled at him. He was reminded, momentarily, of himself and Viktor.

They went out the showroom door. Mordecai began to follow but thought better of it as he realized there were other people there. He didn't want to attract more attention to her than she would already get hauling that stupid warthog out by his bleeding face. He waited until they were gone, took a long minute to collect himself, and emerged into the showroom. Asa was there overseeing the moving crew and chewing on an unlit cigar.

"Did you break that fellow's nose?" he asked, jerking his chin in the direction Innochka and Dimitri went.

Mordecai straightened his cufflinks and tried to appear calmer than he felt, tried not to betray the whirlwind slowly gaining interia inside him. "He came at me," he said, forcing his voice into a deceptive monotony.

"Unwise of him," Asa replied.

"Yes."

Asa nodded. "Right then. I'll send one of the boys to take you back to your room to pack your things. We're catching a private charter back uprir in a couple hours. Russians paid for it. Gracious of the bastards."

"Well they put us to enough trouble, it's the least they could do."

"Hm. True enough. Good work tonight. Jake's out on the dock, he'll take you back to the Quarter."

"Thank you kindly."

When he got back to the room he was surprised to see Innochka's things gone. Had they sent someone ahead of time to get her belongings? He made a mental note to check and ask whether or not her key was ever returned.

He packed quickly, feeling strangely cold and hollow in the room. It did not take long, he'd barely unpacked a thing, but without her there it wasn't somewhere he wanted to be. As he packed something needled and nagged at him, irritating him. When he closed his suitcase he felt as though he was forgetting something, even after the third time he surveyed the suite for some left possession. But he saw nothing.

"What?" he snapped aloud into the empty room, and suddenly he knew:

The ring. The pearl with the tiny diamond in the top.

Innochka Volvakov, at that very moment on a boat to Cuba, still wore his grandmother's ring.

**000**


	13. death handle

 

"Mordecai, Sue's trying to leave her husband," Mitzi drunkenly, stretched out on the hotel bed next to her friend. It was the early days and a small clutch from Lacakdaisy had traveled with Atlas to Memphis to secure an alliance. Mordecai, still somewhat new to the business, was tasked with guarding Mitzi that evening and as such was required to stay in the room with her while interesting things were happening downstairs without him. It was a duty he disliked but he'd learned to cope with in the form of challenging reading, and later as much incessant questioning as Atlas would tolerate. Mitzi had a friend, Sue, in Memphis, who came by to catch up that evening, and by 'catch up' she meant 80% whining about her errant husband. Sue was not very happy and Mordecai would soon make her unhappier.

"There's better men for Sue out there, aren't there, Mordecai?" Mitzi purred.

"It's a certainty, statistically speaking," he replied flatly, staring at his book.

"You hear that? It's a  _certainty ,_ honey," Mitzi said, patting Sue's hand.

Sue frowned and sighed. Mordecai braced himself for what he knew was coming. He knew without looking up that Mitzi would pout at him over her shoulder for a moment, then tilt her head coquettishly in Sue's direction.

"Why don't  _you_ ask her to dinner, Mordecai?"

And then Mordecai would roll his eyes to the ceiling but Sue or whatever poor woman she'd lured into this trap would never seem to register this, instead electing to dissolve at the thought of such an invitation. They almost to a one indicated that if Mitzi's (apparently) handsome bodyguard were to ask her to dinner there was an above average chance she'd accept the invitation. And then Mitzi got to sit back and enjoy Mordecai's impotent and awkward attempts to back out of the date for which he'd been volunteered with some degree of politeness towards the other victim of her little scheme.

But every now and then things went off-script. Mordecai turned to Sue to start in with his usual excuse and reminder that he was there to work, not to chat, but she cut him off.

"Well why should  _he_ ask  _me?_ " she chirped at Mitzi. "I mean honestly, it's the  _twenties_." She turned to him and smiled. "Could I invite  _you_ to dinner, Mordecai?"

Mordecai's eyes went wide. "I -" he began.

He'd never been asked to dinner before. People didn't ask him to dinner. Was she serious? She looked serious. But wasn't she still married? Was this a joke? This was a joke.  _Was it_ a joke?

He glanced at Mitzi. Here eyebrows were up high and her mouth was pursed. She made that face when she was trying to hide something. Or anticipating something. Anticipating a  _punchline_ , Mordecai calculated. So yes. Yes this was a joke. Just a slightly different variation of the same old joke.

He snapped his book shut, look directly into Sue's hopeful eyes, and said, "I don't eat."

Sue gasped. Mitzi whooped with laughter but quickly covered her mouth. "Oh! Oh sweetheart, I'm sorry," Mitzi said, putting her hand on Sue's arm. "He isn't usually  _that_ mean."

"Oh, no, I'm glad he's being honest," Sue said archly, clearly not glad he was being honest or continuing to breathe. "So, Mr. Heller, am I to understand that you're a  _homosexual?_ "

He rolled his eyes. "No, Mrs. Sembler.  _I don't eat_."

Her hostility flickered in favor of puzzlement. "You don't eat… _anything?_ "

"Nothing," Mitzi confirmed, biting her lip. It gave her pleasure to drop this information on people, as though it was hers to deliver, as though he was some curious pet she'd raised and hadn't he turned out funny?

"And might I ask  _why?_ " Sue asked testily.

Mordecai scowled and opened his book. "I've yet to see anything appetizing," he said.

Sue grew very quiet after that and left in short order, apparently crying, for which Mitzi scolded him, but she too grew very quiet after he reminded her that she'd willingly dangled her friend before him and he was under no obligation to be nice to anyone.

"Not even you," he said. "So please don't involve me in your conversations."

Mitzi pouted and batted her eyelashes and did whatever nonsense she did that made Atlas useless. He ignored her. It angered him that she even tried - didn't she know him at all? Mordecai Heller was so resistant to female wiles he could have put it on his resume.

But Innochka Volvokov, off to Cuba with his sole family heirloom, had just summarily ruined that.

That  _grifter_.

That looting, devious she-serpent.

That was what she did, after all. Loot. Steal. Disarm men with her charm and steal their things, that was the name of Innochka Volvakov's game. He should have known from the way she reacted to the ring in the train station that she'd find some way or another to make off with it.

Well, he seethed as the scenery passed. She'd certainly found an effective way to distract him, hadn't she? It was so effective she was all he could think about.

But that's what she did, wasn't it? He wasn't stupid, he knew what she was. He knew how things like this worked, how  _Mitzis_ and women like Mitzi worked, with their clinging dresses and their big wet eyes that promised a pleasure so great it seemed a man would go and do something stupid enough to get himself killed for it. He thought of Atlas and grimaced, but he could not stem the question that kept bubbling up to the surface: what was it?

What, in actual fact,  _was it?_

What in the world did women offer that was so good it bewitched men like  _Atlas May?_ He'd previously only thought of this phenomenon in regards to the momentary weakness or foolishness of the man bewitched, but since it was now  _him_ that was bewitched and he was angry about it, he found himself repeatedly fixating on that single question:

What was it?

What untold thing was the furthest extrapolation of what had just happened between himself and Innochka in Orlov's office?

He took a ragged breath.

He was well familiar with the climax of the sexual response cycle and how it effected him. He had trouble believing that alone was enough to drive a man to ruin. Mere physical assistance with that simple physiological stimuli and inevitable response wasn't worth the reckless behavior he'd witnessed, especially when it was so easily obtained on one's own. He knew women must offer something else, something more, but since he'd never-

-he shuddered-

-never  _really_ -

-had a partner participating in the precursors to that climax, nor had he ever desired one, he had very little clue what flame this feminine eye language promised that turned perfectly intelligent men into feckless, gullible moths. Nor had he ever cared. But now he found himself consumed: just  _what was it_ that was on offer there?

He shook his head. Made himself stop wondering.

_It didn't matter._

It didn't matter what that Mitzi-look promised because it was all a ruse, it was all to lift his grandmother's ring. Innochka was a looting horrid bag of trash who'd deceived him in the worst way possible because it was the one way he thought himself immune to entirely. She'd made him feel stupid, had made him feel stupider than he could ever remember feeling as he sat on this lounger and seethed out at the Mississippi, at the fireflies, at the stunning view from the top deck of this beautifully appointed pleasure barge her bosses had hired for his. It came complete with sixty cases of top shelf vodka nestled snugly between carefully wrapped parts of disassembled automatic weapons. The walls of the ship were reportedly filled with these charming little fairy gifts, gifts that ensured he would likely see that Bathsheba again, likely lording that ring over him, the final punchline to the worst joke he'd ever been the butt of.

And she'd laugh at him.  _She'd laugh at him_. They always did, it always turned out to be a joke on him whenever he was confused about something with a person, and he couldn't remember being more confused about something with a person in his life.

But no.

"No!" he said aloud.

There was nothing worth getting confused about for her, for her type, for the  _Mitzi_ type, for the kind of sultry, pouting, mythical shiksa that supposedly haunted the dreams of all his people's men - 'mythical' being a status to which he had long ago relegated said shiksas, as he'd never seen one that did a single thing for him. But that particular beast was no longer as mythical now that Innochka the magical shiksacorn had come cantering into his life.

Correction: the magical  _looting_ shiksacorn.

Such looting!

Good lord, he'd been so close to her! Well within pickpocket range! What else had she taken? He glanced down at his cuffs to find his cufflinks still very much present, but found a curious lack of relief in this. Certainly she'd stolen  _something_ from him. He patted down his vest. Innochka Volvokov and her sticky fingers, taking dead men's trash -

The pocketwatch she'd given him still hung from his vest. A bolt of panic shot through him.

Innochka Volvokov and her - and her gift of  _incrimination_ , that was what that was! She wanted to make him an  _accessory to_ her thievery, and what way to better do that than make him a  _beneficiary of_ her thievery! Ha! Yes, he was on to her! Why, he had half a mind to rip that watch right off his vest right now! That would show  _her_! Innochka Volvakov and her - her  _mouth,_ which he  _only_ thought about in  _annoyance_ because it refused form words he could understand. He patted along his jacket. Innochka Volvokov and her -

-her -

His eyes widened.

Her pistol.

Her amusingly girly mother of pearl handled pistol, which he'd just pulled out of his jacket pocket and now held in his hand. Her flashy little pea-shooter that shot true and kicked like a mule.

He swallowed and turned it over in his hands.

Maybe - maybe it wasn't important to her, he told himself weakly. She probably had lots of guns like thi - oh, who the hell was he fooling, these Cyrillic letters engraved on the handle were almost certainly her name, and there was no way the gold python curling around the stock wasn't a custom job. A garish custom job, but a custom job all the same.

He closed his eyes and gave a deep, long, defeated sigh, the kind where he kept exhaling after there was nothing left to express just for the momentary relief of feeling nothing in his chest but tight emptiness.

Maybe  _he_ was the grifter.

Maybe  _he_ was the looting, devious she-serpent.

Maybe  _he_ was the magical shiksacorn.

"Evening, Heller!" Asa Sweet suddenly said, having suddenly materialized at Mordecai's side. Mordecai startled. How had he missed Asa approaching him in such a small space as this topmost deck?

"Asa," Mordecai muttered.

"You look positively miserable!" Sweet said brightly. "I'll take it as a sign that things are back to normal. It was getting surreal with you looking so happy all the time."

Mordecai looked up at Asa, his eyes going wide.

Asa winked. "Just kidding, kid. Lots of reasons to look happy now, though. This nightmare's over and there was oil in the well after all. If you've gotten enough brooding in there's a party in the lounge."

"Noted," Mordecai said darkly, scowling at the river.

"Still more coming down the pipe I see," Asa replied indulgently. "I'll leave you to it."

**000**

It took Mordecai a while to accept that she hadn't stolen the ring.

_Probably_ hadn't stolen the ring.

He had no evidence to suggest she had but he also had no evidence to suggest she  _hadn't,_ something he clung to for the first few days back in St. Louis. But no. No. In his calmer moments - which were most moments - he could see that it was most likely she had merely forgotten to return the ring to him, as he had forgotten to return her gun to her. For some reason - against all logic - this realization filled him not with a sense of relief, but one of heaviness and dread and inevitability that in no way fit the situation. It alarmed him. Why was Innochka the devious thief so much easier to understand than Innochka who merely let the ring slip her mind?

The entire river cruise home - the majority of which Mordecai spent "brooding" on the topmost deck - her pistol burned away against his side. Now that he knew it was there, and knew it was hers, it seemed almost to buzz with a current every time he touched it. He spent a good deal of time studying it, turning it in his hands. It was beautifully made, if flashy and aggressive and entirely not to his taste. Had she designed it? Were the gold letters her name or did they mean something else? Why a python? Did pythons have significance to her? He began to do a field strip to see how clean she kept it, but it felt wrong somehow, like going through someone's washroom cabinet. He allowed the gun its dignity and slipped it back into his pocket, only to take it out again and stare at it.

It was very difficult to determine what, exactly, he should do with the pistol when he returned to his apartment. There was nothing in his apartment he did not own and never had been. He had a table in the kitchen with one chair, a single armchair with a footstool in the living room, a sizeable workbench (with one stool) where the couch should have been. His apartment was not a place that provided for anyone other than him. He had no designated place for something that wasn't his, and everywhere he put it felt wrong. He paced his apartment waiting for a location to become apparent.

Eventually he settled on providing a drawer for it in the cabinet above his workbench, which was where he kept weapons he was tinkering with or otherwise managing. It nevertheless seemed to inevitably end the day on his bedside table, where he put it aside before he fell asleep, having inevitably taken it from the drawer.

He took it from the drawer for a whole host of reasons, changing on the day. He fully intended to figure out where to mail it to her that afternoon - somehow - or he'd checked out a reptile book and had to be absolutely sure that was a python on the stock - for science - or just to muse at how small it was, how small her hands must have been, and why hadn't he noticed her hands more, it was annoying not to be able to draw them up in his mind even if he could still feel them on his face if he closed his eyes and tried. And he did. And then he stopped, cringing at himself, and put the pistol on his bedside table. He would turn it over in his hands once before he slept, and sometimes he dreamt of pythons -  _Burmese_ pythons, he now knew- slithering and curling against one another in a way that left his dream-self strangely famished. He would wake in the morning, see it, feel ridiculous, put the pistol back in it's drawer, and repeat the process. He watched himself develop this habit with concern. It was a problematic habit considering he might have the pistol for years.

This thought did something strange in his chest, made him feel like he couldn't breathe. He didn't like it so he tried not to give much energy to the thought of not seeing her again for that length of time. Especially, he considered, since there was a high likelihood he would never see her again at all.

His heart began to pound.

He truly might never see her again. She was in a dangerous line of work, after all, and she still had that hair. That long braid. That  _death handle_ she insisted on keeping attached to her head. His insides twisted. All it would take is one man - one strong huge man - to get a good hold on it and he could drag her anywhere, do anything -  _anything_ \- to her. Innochka may have been fast and skilled but she couldn't fend off a man of Viktor's stature in that situation. She'd be dead. And Mordecai would be here in St. Louis keeping her pistol like a gaudy iron pet.

_Stop thinking about it, there's nothing you can do,_ Mordecai thought to himself.  _Losses are endemic to this business and even moreso to hers. The braid is her risk to take._

He nodded to his own thought. But then he made fists, opened his hands and closed them again in futility. It was such a  _stupid_ risk. It wasn't like she needed the extra hair, cutting it wouldn't detract from her beauty. It would be impossible to detract from that kind of beauty.

But he might never see her again.

However, unbeknownst to him, it seemed he was seeing her everywhere.

"You're not yourself," Asa said one afternoon having called Mordecai into his office.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Don't play that with me. You know exactly what I'm talking about. This morning was the third time you've been late for a meeting in the past two months."

"There's construction on sixth," he replied quickly. "The traffic- "

"They finished sixth a week ago."

Mordecai's insides turned to ice as he realized Asa was correct. "I - I didn't mean - not sixth - I meant - the other - street -that's - "

"Sit down," Asa ordered.

Mordecai obeyed.

Asa went to the little bar next to his desk. He retrieved a crystal bottle of whiskey and two tumblers. "This is what I'm talking about. You're not one to make excuses, but if you were, you'd at the very least put a minimum of thought and effort into them. I know you think I'm a bit dull but I'm not that dull. I also live in St. Louis. I also have eyes."

He extended a tumbler of whiskey to Mordecai.

"I don't - "

"You do."

Mordecai raised an eyebrow at Asa. "Do I?"

"I think you  _should_ ," he said, walking around his desk to take a seat. He took a swig of his whiskey. "I think you could use it."

Mordecai looked down into the glass. "I don't think it will help," he said softly.

Asa sighed. "Let's cut to the chase."

"Please let's not, not if it's the pursuit I suspect it is."

"I know you're mixed up about - "

"It has nothing to do with -"

"If you'd stop bullshitting me for about twenty seconds and  _let me finish_ ," Asa said, "I know you're mixed up about  _what we both know you're mixed up about_ , but this has got to stop. Nothing, no amount of - well, I don't know what specifically, but no amount of it will bring that woman back."

"How many times must we do this?" Mordecai replied, exasperated. "I will admit my performance has been - has been lackluster - lately - but-"

"Oh for crying out loud, kid, you stare at every woman that looks even a little bit like her."

Mordecai's chest fell into his stomach.

"I - " Mordecai began, but stopped when he met Asa's eyes, which told him without question how more dodges would be handled. He looked down into his drink for a long moment, feeling pinned. He felt something in him break, and to his astonishment, a sense of  _relief_ came over him. There was no way out of this discussion but he was suddenly unsure he wanted one.

"I…do?" he asked, his voice soft and hollow.

"Yes.  _Creepily_. Like they're  _lunch_."

Mordecai paused, face burning. He gingerly raised the whiskey to his lips and took a sip. The sip turned into a swig.

Asa gave a firm nod. "Good man."

"I … didn't realize," he said, throat burning. He coughed.

"Hey, we're all doing it to some extent, you just do it with a little something extra that makes it … I'm gonna say …  _unsettling_. I, um…don't think the dark-haired ladies care for it." Asa paused. "Most of them, anyway."

"I apologize," Mordecai said, his voice a husk.

"It's all right. Just try and be mindful of - "

"It was - it was just - perplexing, with her," Mordecai said quickly, before his throat closed up on him. "The whole experience. It's …it continues to - perplex me. And sometimes - often - I find myself thinking about it, and it seems I - lose track of -what I'm - "

Asa smiled. "Welcome to it, son."

"Welcome to  _what?_ "

Asa poured more whiskey into Mordecai's glass. "Welcome to it."

But Asa had never answered the question. Welcome to  _what?_

It remained a mystery. So he stuck to those things which weren't mysteries, the two things he knew the most about: death and probability. And from what he knew of those things there was a very high likelihood he would never see Innochka Volvakov again.

He drilled that fact into himself. Made it tint his every thought of her. One day, five months after he'd kissed her in New Orleans, he wrapped the pistol in a silk handkerchief and put it back in its drawer for what he knew would be a long time. What he was  _determined_ would be a long time. His life had to keep moving forward, and it was easier this way. Carrying her with him like this was draining, a burden. It was easier, more  _efficient_ , more  _professional,_ to let her fade into the past, a perplexing memory that would over time burn him less and less until one day everything would be normal again.

Yes, he thought, shutting the drawer.

Normal again.

**000**

He began sitting down in the Marigold room.

He wasn't sure why, exactly, he accepted Asa's invitation to sit at the table with him and "the boys" that day, as opposed to literally every other day he'd been asked. It was seemingly monumental - the entire table quieted as he had a seat. They paused their card game and looked at him.

"Wow," someone finally said.

"Well!" Asa said, smiling. "Glad to have you with us, Heller! Deal you in?"

"What are we playing?"

"Poker, Cantrell draw."

Mordecai nodded and was given five cards. After a few rounds "the boys" grew accustomed to him being there, and over the weeks grew accustomed to him regularly "cleaning their clocks" as Asa would guffaw, clapping him on the shoulder in a way Mordecai was surprised not to find offensive. He nearly  _smiled_.

Something had changed between them since that office discussion. Every now and then Asa made a gesture that could be interpreted as an overture to friendship, and every now and then Mordecai accepted. The overtures did not always go smoothly - in fact they often ended with Mordecai feeling irked or annoyed - but he still found himself circling Asa gingerly waiting for the next extended hand.

It was usually a poker hand.

"Seen and raised," Mordecai said, tossing a few chips from his pile, usually if not always the tallest on the table.

"Heller the Abacus over there countin' cards," someone muttered. Mordecai was only beginning to learn their names, but he knew their attitudes well. This one was Gerald, he was pretty sure - and Gerald was a sulking malcontent.

"I do no such thing," Mordecai said as he counted the cards. "However I approve of the moniker."

"Heller the Abacus?" Asa asked.

"Yes," Mordecai said. "I like that quite a bit."

"Better than those Sicilian names, Jimmy the Sausage and what," the man on Asa's other side, 87% probability of Edward, said.

"Heller the Sausage," Gerald muttered. " _Card countin'_  sausage. I call."

"Heller the Card-Countin' Sausage doesn't have quite the same ring to it," Mordecai replied. He laid his hand on the table. "Full house. Better sausage next time." The gathered men moaned in unison as Mordecai began gathering the chips from the center of the table.

"Hey Asa, so listen to this," said someone, named possibly Philip, who came up to the table holding a small package. "Just got this from the mailroom, no idea what to think of it. We got a little parcel from - I don't know, Mars? What language is this, Martian on here?" He turned the package briefly so the table could see, and every atom in Mordecai's body ground to a halt before he fully realized what he was looking at.

"It's Russian you fuckin' idiot," someone said.

"And it's addressed to - get this," possibly-Philip continued. " _Max Goldwine_. Do we even have a Max Goldwine here? Why is a Martian sending packages to a Jew at the Maribel-"

There was a sudden cacophony of falling chips. Mordecai, reeling in disbelief, had simply ceased to stop gathering his winnings when they reached the edge of the table, so they fell loudly into his lap and all over the floor. Everyone looked at him, but he was still looking at possibly Philip, eyes wide, mouth slightly slack.

Possibly Philip raised his eyebrows. "Uh…is this yours, Mr. Heller?"

Mordecai blinked, suddenly aware of all the eyes on him. "It's … it's. Um." He swallowed. "Yes. Thank you." He stood, sending another shower of chips to the floor. "I dropped those. Sorry. Thank you," he said, and in two steps snatched the package from possibly Philip's hand and was out the door.

The table looked after him in puzzlement.

"Go open your space package, I'll take my fuckin' chips back you fuckin' sausage," Gerald said, crawling under the table.

"Was that from the  _leetle_ Russian girl, you think?" Edward muttered, chuckling. "I'll bet he's losin' his goddam mind right now."

"Can't lose what's already lost," Asa replied and lit his cigar.

**000**

Mordecai Heller careened from surface to surface in search of anything he could set the parcel against to open it, but this hall was only four long walls with no other available platforms, and suddenly he had no clear idea where exactly the nearest flat surface was - and he would need some sort of knife - a knife he had, but a table, mother of god he needed a table, he needed a table with an intensity with which he could never before remember needing a table and he was in an interminably, absurdly long space  _without a single table._

"Why are there no tables?" he asked aloud into nothing and sent himself careening through a door which his body seemed to recall had a counter, but certainly not his mind, because all he knew was that in one minute he was in a oblong space of frustration and in the next he was pressing the package to the marble counter and working his switchblade beneath the twine that held the parcel together, opening it as quickly and carefully as he could with shaking fingers and a pounding heart. Inside was a folded piece of paper and something wrapped up in a bit of gold silk. As the silk unraveled to reveal a pearl ring with a tiny diamond in the top a hit of warm vanilla scent floated up from it, and suddenly every single memory he'd tried so hard to bury came punching up through him - her hair, her eyes, her hands smile neck voice  _lips -_ all of it came punching up through him with brass knuckles.

He clutched the ring, pressed the handkerchief to his nose, closed his eyes and inhaled, something he would feel foolish looking back on but did not question in the moment. His eyelids fluttered. He shakingly unfolded the piece of paper.

_Max,_

_Кажется, в суматохе, что я забыл вернуть тебе это. Я прошу прощения за задержку. Я послал его, как только это было и безопасно общаться и мы достигли надежного почтовую службу. Это заняло больше времени, чем ожидалось. Он делает иногда._

_Я носил это кольцо совсем немного, чтобы убедиться, что я не потерял его, и я вырос любопытно. Это очень уникальный. Я могу с уверенностью сказать, что никогда не видел такой настройки. Если есть история за ним я хотел бы знать это._

_Я буду скучать по его._

_Я считаю, у вас может быть свой пистолет? Со мной можно связаться несколько надежно по этому адресу, но я не советую вам отправить пистолет здесь, это не будет в безопасности. Пожалуйста, держите его, пока мы не встретимся снова._

_Я надеюсь, что вы хорошо, Макс. Это было очень приятно работать с вами._

_Я думаю о тебе часто._

_-Julita_

Mordecai stared at the paper, his hands open and useless. It took him a long moment to fully diagnose the problem.

"I can't read Russian. Innochka, why did you send me this in Russian, I can't -what are you  _saying?_  Oy.  _Oy_ ," he nearly moaned as he realized he would not get an answer right then, in that very room, that very night, and would instead have to live for - he checked his pocketwatch,  _the_ pocketwatch - about nine more hours until businesses opened and he could start looking for a translator.

He stood with his hands open over the letter, the silk, the ring, and the collective vanilla scent of it all, that unmistakable Innochka scent that put him right back in New Orleans, in Orlov's house, in Orlov's office, right back there with her, only he could not touch her through this haze of nonsense words. He turned cartwheels in his mind, spun and tumbled uselessly through emotions he could not name as he stalked the floors of the Maribel hotel, head forward, eyes wide, just trying to keep moving.

It was nine hours of the purest torture he'd ever experienced.

Mordecai Heller had had been sprayed with a shotgun, had fallen eight feet onto a staircase, had bullets torn from his muscles with no anesthesia, had been punched in face so hard he spat his own teeth onto gravel, but the heat of that undecipherable letter in his hand was like being burned at the stake.

**000**


	14. a Brooklyn hey

_Dear Max,_

_It seems in the confusion that I forgot to return this to you. I'm sorry for the delay. I sent it as soon as it was both safe to communicate and we reached a reliable postal service. It took longer than expected. It does sometimes._

_I've worn this ring quite a bit to ensure that I did not lose it, and I've grown curious about it. It's very unique. I can safely say I've never seen such a setting. If there is a story behind it I'd love to know it._

_I'll miss it._

_I believe you may have my pistol? I can be reached somewhat reliably at this address but I do not advise you to send the pistol here, it would not be safe. Please keep it until we meet again._

_I hope you are well, Max. It was a pleasure working with you._

_I think of you often._

_-Julita_

Mordecai scanned the words once, then twice, standing there in the translator's office. The translator was not happy with him. He came bursting in at ten thirty am, wild-eyed and shaky from the coffee he'd been perpetually downing since three. He'd have long lost count of how many cups he'd drank had he been counting the the first place.

"I need this translated," he said, holding up the letter.

The translator looked up from his work and raised his bushy white eyebrows. He had a long beard and glasses that made him look wise and inscrutable, like a Chinese fortune teller. "Then you've come to the right place, sir. If you'll just fill out this form and leave the document with me I can have it ready for you at…" he flipped the pages of his day planner,"…how is four thirty tomorrow afternoon for pickup?"

"No," Mordecai said. "I need this translated  _now._ "

The translator smiled patiently. "I'm afraid that's the soonest I can have it to you."

"That's not good enough," Mordecai said.

"I have other clients before you, sir."

Mordecai reached for his wallet. "How much to make this priority?" He laid a dollar down on the translator's desk. Then another. "Say when," he said, and laid a third bill on the table.

The translator took this in. After a moment he interlaced his bony fingers and leaned back in his seat.

Mordecai paused, eyebrows raised, and laid another dollar on the desk. When the translator didn't react he laid another down. And another. Growing increasingly annoyed Mordecai reached for a seventh bill before the translator held up his hand and said, " _When._ And six dollars puts you at the top of the pile, Mr-?"

"Max," Mordecai said. "Just Max."

"Very well. Have a seat," the translator said, then called into the next room, "Janice, some tea for our guest."

And now here he stood, scanning and re-scanning the letter.

"Is there anything else I can do for you today, Max?" the translator asked.

"Yes. I mean no. I mean thank you. Goodbye," Mordecai said, and quickly left. It felt near rain. Fall leaves crunched beneath his feet as he sped to a cafe across the path. He sat down, his head swimming. He was exhausted. And cold. And  _starving_.

A smiling waitress stopped by his table. "And how are you this morn-"

"Yes, tea or something," he snapped.

"I-" the waitress stammered. "What kind of tea?"

"Just tea, just any tea! Thank you!"

"Oh, I - right away," she said, and began to scurry off.

"Wait!" he barked. "And a cookie thing!"

She turned, fear in her eyes. "A cookie - ?" she gestured to the counter, on which were display plates of at least ten different kinds of cookies. "Wh- which -?"

"My god. Um. Those. In the - those, one of those, in the jar," he said, jabbing his finger at the only cookies contained in a jar, away from hands and sneezes.

"A snickerdoodle?"

"A snick - a what ?- a snicker? - what? - a what- look, yes, whatever's in the jar! Those! Thank you. Okay? Thank you," he said as she escaped behind the counter. Mordecai unfolded the translation and commenced poring over it.

_It seems in the confusion that I forgot to return this to you. I'm sorry for the delay. I sent it as soon as it was both safe to communicate and we reached a reliable postal service. It took longer than expected. It does sometimes._

Where in the world were they that access to a postal service was that uncertain? What remote lands was she slogging through? The stamps on the envelope indicated it had been sent from Venezuela. He tried to imagine her in Venezuela but could not. He knew next to nothing about that country other than it was awash in oil money, which likely provided for a large antiquities market among the new wealth. Nice company to keep after selling weapons to both sides of various South American conflicts, he supposed.

_I've worn this ring quite a bit to ensure that I did not lose it_

That was an odd tactic to fend off loss. Wearing an item of jewelry on dangerous work would make it more likely to be lost, not less. He frowned. Maybe she wasn't so careful with his belongings after all.

_I've grown curious about it. It's very unique. I can safely say I've never seen such a setting. If there is a story behind it I'd love to know what it is._

He considered this. All he recalled about that ring was the story of his grandmother sewing it into the dollhouse pillowcase while escaping some pogrom or another, but he was certain there was more to it than that.

_I'll miss it._

She'd  _miss_ it?

He reached into his jacket pocket for the ring and absently slid it onto his pinky, the only finger it fit. It was tiny. The tiny ring, the tiny pistol, her tiny hands.

_I believe you may have my pistol? I can be reached somewhat reliably at this address but I do not advise you to send the pistol here, it would not be safe. Please keep it until we meet again._

His heart sped up. Implying they would meet again. Possibly soon. Soon enough that Innochka was not troubled about missing her weapon for the duration.

_I hope you are well, Max. It was a pleasure working with you._

He swallowed in anticipation of the next line.

_I think of you often._

He read it over.

_I think of you often._

_I think of you often._

_I think of you often._

**000**

_I think of you constantly._

He threw that sentence out long before he committed it to paper. He couldn't start a letter back with something like that. That looked obsessive, even if it was the truth.  _Was_ it the truth? He'd spent months wrenching her out of his mind, did that count? Was it still thinking of someone if you were trying not to think of them? What about his dreams? Dreams couldn't possibly count, he couldn't help those, though he could probably not try so hard to get back to sleep.

A wave of exhausted giddiness crashed over him. He nearly lowered his head to the workbench. Who was he trying to fool, she'd never been an inch from his mind even on his most preoccupied days. But those thoughts were not delineated or defined, in no way separate from one another. She was his own brand of mental humidity. She was a taste that lingered in his air.

_I think of you often._

He stared at the blank page,at his tastefully monogrammed stationary, and fought another wave of exhaustion. It was too much effort to compose anything through the haze of over thirty hours without sleep. He stopped fighting, slithered into his bedroom and into bed.

**000**

He didn't get as much sleep as he would have liked, but it was enough to set him back in his right mind when he awoke. The first thing he thought of was the letter on the workbench, his first impulse to leap out of bed to see it again, but he stopped himself.

 _Now now now, this is not how we're going to live life, Mordecai_.

It was his mother's voice, clear as day. It was one of her gentler scoldings, used when she felt one of her children was indulging in laziness or self-pity. When he was very young some days he would come home from school feeling sorry for himself, but his mother would never allow him to give this any quarter for long. Not in front of her, at least. Soon enough he learned how to disallow himself such indulgences when she was not present. How to collect himself and move on quickly. He was used to doing this gathering of self after something unpleasant having happened, something that had jarred him right out of his body - speakeasy raids, car crashes, being shot at, being actually shot. He'd never had to do it in response to something … pleasant. He'd never had a  _good_ thing shake him to pieces this way.

Good, though? Was it? Mordecai frowned. Perhaps he was being a little too quick to use that word for this situation. After all, what had he done last night, pacing the floors of the Maribel for hours like a caffeinated wraith? He could have come home and gotten some sleep in the nine hours from when he received her letter to the opening of the business day, but instead he allowed himself to get so spun into a frenzy that he'd forgotten that he was a professional, that he was at work, that people were always watching, always judging. His work depended on the threatening mystique Atlas initially cultivated for him, which Mordecai fostered over time to its present mythic proportion. He was a merciless shadow, death itself. If he allowed himself to dissolve every time this woman touched his life it would be seen as a weakness and exploited. He'd seen it happen to men far his superior, seen it have dire consequences. So no.

No.

He would  _not_ leap from his bed and stare at that letter.

He would get up and make breakfast. He would eat that breakfast on his balcony because it was a nice evening. He would shower and dress and go on about his day, normally, with  _dignity_ , and respond to her letter  _when and if_ he had the time. There would be none of this heart-poundy breathless nonsense with him making expensive demands of translators and -  _oh god_ \- inhaling her handkerchief like some sort of  _pervert._

Nope.

No. That was  _not_ how Mordecai Heller was going to live life.

He sat up in bed and rubbed his eyes. Put on his glasses, stood, stretched, put on his robe and slippers, then walked out of his bedroom and headed straight down the hall to the kitchen to make a pot of tea. Curiously enough his trajectory veered suddenly and severely to the left at the door to the living room. Even more curiously he seemed to be gravitating over the to workbench, oh and out came the stool, and he sat on the stool, and smoothed the letter - the one written in her hand - out to read.

Or, rather, to be stared at.

He could not read Russian.

**000**

Defeated, Mordecai brought his breakfast - tea and French toast - to the workbench, figuring if he was going to switch between staring at the original letter, staring at the translation, and staring at the unwritten expanse of his response, he may as well do it with food.

The French toast - though it was likely the best French toast within four states - didn't do much to help with his cognition. He still had very little idea what to say to her - or rather he had too many ideas, half of them outright objectionable and the other half too slippery to verbalize. So he focused on the one concrete request she'd made of him. The one clear question he could gather information for and answer.

He retrieved a box from a drawer, inside which was a pile of letters. He plucked the one off the top, opened it, and quickly scanned it. He retrieved another blank sheet of stationary and a pen.

_Dear Mother -_

_I hope this letter finds you and the girls well. I apologize for the delay in my response, my work has been keeping me very busy._

_Congratulations, though much belated, are in order for your purchase of a second apartment building. I am glad that Esther seems to have mastered what I taught her about investments and that Rose enjoyed decorating the lobby. Those are both nice things to hear._

_I suspect your concerns about your health and age are, as ever, overblown. It is a well established fact that the women of the Weiss line cannot be killed any any conventional means. Your mother lived till ninety eight if I'm not mistaken. I would not worry overly, though I cannot say I fault you your fear of a slow decline. Such things are no cakewalk, as we are both well aware._

_There is something I would like to ask you. Is there a story behind grandmother's pearl ring? There's a person in my life who is curious about it. According to her it is a very unique setting. I cannot recall much about it other than the story about the doll pillow. Anything you know would be appreciated._

_Things are well here. Uneventful. Work keeps me quite occupied. It is very cold here and you wouldn't like it._

_All my love to you and the girls -_

_Mordecai_

**000**

The reply came so quickly that Mordecai was alarmed to see the envelope in his mailbox. When he looked closely at the stamps he saw his mother sent it at the highest possible rate, two day delivery from New York to St. Louis.

"This must have cost a fortune," he muttered to himself. Had someone died? When he carefully opened the envelope and unfolded the letter - written on tasteful monogrammed stationary - he caught the briefest, dry-goods scent of home. His eyes fell to his mother's loopy, nearly illegible handwriting.

_Son-_

_There's a girl!? Who is this girl? Is she Jewish? Are you proposing?_

"Mother!" Mordecai said aloud.

_What is she like? Is she beautiful? Does she treat you well? Is she Jewish? Is she smart? Well she would have to be. Oh I can't tell you how overjoyed I am for you! Oh I always hoped that you'd find someone one day who would fill your life up! But I wish I knew more about her, and about you, now Mordecai I know your work whatever it may be keeps you very busy but would it really be so much of a burden to write to your old mother a bit more often? More than once a year or two? We miss you terribly, especially Rose. Her Saul is a spitting image of you, did I tell you that? Esther calls him your replacement._

_Thank you for your congratulations on the second building. I still find it a strange position to be in but Esther says the title of landlord suits me. Bless you, this would not be if not for you._

"You always had good business sense, Mother, you just needed the start-up capital," he said aloud. He was very nearly the sole breadwinner for the family when he had to make a hasty exit from New York. Perpetually worried his family would end up on the street without him, when he began to earn a steady income he sent his mother a small percentage of it every month. As his income grew that percentage grew along with it. His sister Esther, always sharp as a tack, managed to make that money grow further through clever investing, which eventually allowed his mother to purchase the building they'd grown up in when it came up for sale. And now, a second.

_Oh I miss your face! I will tell you what I know about the ring but please call me on the telephone. Writing hurts my old hands and I want to hear your voice. Oh my goodness you found a girl! We're just beside ourselves. We can't wait to hear about her so please call your only family._

_Love always -_

_Mother_

On the back was written something else:

_Mrdrkai-_

_I swear big brother if you don't call after an announcement like this I will come down to St. Louis and FIND YOU. She's already planning your wedding. If you don't call her she won't die right away, but she will slowly die over the weeks while moaning "Why hasn't he called?" Don't put me through that or I will do something terrible to you. Also tell me your woman is a shiksa. I bet mother there isn't one whole Jewish girl in St. Louis. If I'm right she owes me a dollar. Don't let me down._

_Okay better hear from you soon or terrible things, Heller._

_-Eztr_

He lingered on the spellings she'd used for their names. They were ancient history, private names used only in furtive notes left for one another when they were children. When it became clear he had trouble telling the difference she'd invented the system: an insult scribbled in the margin of his favorite book, to  _Mrdrkai_  from  _Eztr_ , was not an actual threat. It was not serious. It was a joke.

But it was just as annoying.

Putting on his best aghast voice, Mordecai picked up the phone and dialed the main office of the apartment building he'd grown up in.

"Heller Arms?" came the voice on the other end, a Brooklyn voice, aggressive and lyrical.

"You're still signing your name that way?" he asked.

There was a brief screech of surprise. "My god!" his sister exclaimed, then laughed. "I was thinking of having it legally changed, wanna make something of it?"

"Those spellings are stupid, Esther. They were stupid when we were children and they're stupid now."

"Maybe  _you're_ stupid now, you ever think of that, wise guy?"

"A _ctually_ , I was thinking-"

"Maybe you were stupid then, too."

"I was thinking that-"

"Maybe you're just really really stupid."

Mordecai sighed and put his hand to his head. "God dammit, Esther."

"My god, it's been so long since someone called me God Dammit Esther! I can't believe it, I'm actually on the phone with Mordecai, goodness me. It's been …what? Five years? Six?"

"About that, yes."

She gave a brief, unhappy  _hmmph_. "Well how are you? You sound strange."

"I do?"

"Yeah, you don't sound like you. You sound like some silky fellow I don't trust. What, do they lynch Jewish Yankees down there too? Why do you have to hide your accent, Mr. Accountant?"

He sighed. "My clients tend to be in the upper reaches of St. Louis society. They have deep roots in the Civil War. I found they respond to me better when I don't remind them of defeat."

"Eh. So long as you're happy doing whatever it is you do. I wouldn't know you were from Brooklyn hearing you. I don't like it."

"Good. Listen, is Mother there?"

"Nope. She just stepped out to go to the store. You're stuck with me for another fifteen minutes at least. So tell me about this girl! Since when do you like girls anyway?"

"I -" Mordecai said, flustered. "I don't know. Mother and Rose need to calm down. It's not -"

"Rose doesn't even know, we can barely mention you around her," Esther said archly. "She's never gonna forgive you, you know that?"

"Esther -"

"It was her  _wedding_. You didn't show up for her  _wedding_ , Mordecai. I think she was more excited about seeing you than she was about marrying Saul and  _you didn't show up_. To her  _wedding._ My god, _she wanted you to give her away_ and you couldn't even-"

" _Esther_ ," Mordecai said pointedly. "I don't have long for this conversation, let's not waste it on this."

She sighed. "Fine. Fine fine fine. You're a real son of a bitch, though, you know that?"

"Yes, you've said as much before." He smirked. "And don't talk about mother that way."

She laughed, then muffled the laugh with her hand. "You always get me with that one. Why do I never learn?"

"Maybe you're just really really stupid."

"Ha! Stop making me laugh! Let me stay mad at you, you bastard. Bleh." She sighed. "Anyway so you're getting married?  _You?_ "

"No!" he exclaimed. "It's nothing like that, it's just letters at this point."

"Just letters? What, is she a mail-order bride or something?"

He paused, startled. "No, I met her through work."

"Oh," Esther said. " _Interesting."_

"She travels quite a bit, so letters. Just letters for now. Nothing to start planning weddings over."

Esther chuckled. "You can't stop Mother, you know how she gets. She's already naming your kids. Hannah for a girl. The first granddaughter will be named Hannah, so decrees Old Zippy."

"She's insane. I'm never having children."

"Yeah, she's insane because  _neither of us_ are having children. Poor Rose. She's three months along with the second one but Mother doesn't know that and don't tell her."

"She hasn't told mother?"

"Are you kidding me? Mother would crawl right up there. She's - oh!" Esther said, pausing. "Well speak of Satan, it's old Tzipporah coming in the door, and so soon! Mother! Mom! Did you even make it to the store or did you just smell it and turn around in the middle of the street?"

"What?" he heard his mother ask tiredly. "Smell what?"

"You smelled your son on the phone. He's - "

There were steps, then the phone was muffled, then apparently dropped, and Esther was laughing.

"Mordecai! Mordecai? Is this my son! Is this really my son on the telephone!?"

He closed his eyes and sighed. "Yes, mother. It's me. Hello."

**000**

"Well let's see now," his mother said after she finally calmed down. "Let me see what I remember about that ring. Hmmm. Well, it's - it was your great-grandmother's originally. Your great grand-father owned a small pawn shop and it was in the window, caught her eye as she was walking past. Your great-grandfather invited her in to try it on because - well your great grandma was beautiful. And then - oh. Oh. Actually this is a terrible story, Mordecai. Just a terrible story."

"What happened?"

"Well this was when they lived in the Pale."

"The Pale?"

"The Pale of Settlement."

"The - " Mordecai began. "Sorry, the what?"

"In Russia. Where the Russian czars sent the Jews to live."

Mordecai straightened. "We're  _Russian?_ "

"A little." She paused, her voice going critical. "You're a smart boy, I thought you knew that?"

"I - of course I knew that," he said quickly, automatically. "I just - forgot that. Momentarily."

"We have a bit of Russian blood, yes Mordecai," she said indulgently, as though he were dull. He suppressed a ripple of old shame. "The Pale of Settlement - well, it was the Jewish ghetto, and the pogroms - always the pogroms. The riot broke out as she was actually in the pawn shop. She was still wearing the ring but they were separated - I imagine it was very chaotic - but he said he knew she would be his wife from the moment he saw her, and that even as they were rounding people up and shooting them in the streets he knew he would survive and he would marry her, because she had this ring. He'd put it on her ring finger so as far as he was concerned they were engaged."

Mordecai's eyes widened as he took this in. "That's…" he began, but paused. "That's quite an assumption to make."

"Sometimes you just know. And she did too, we're all of us here, aren't we? Speaking of which -  _you found a girl!?"_

_"Mother-"_

"Mom, ask him if she's Jewish," Esther said, moving from the background nearer to the receiver.

"Is she Jewish?" his mother asked hopefully.

Mordecai sighed. "You owe Esther a dollar."

"Ha!" Esther exclaimed, but his mother took in a sharp breath. "Well," she began, but then seemed to think better of it. "It's - if you're happy."

"Mother, it's irrelevant - we're not -"

"I would have preferred - well - you know how I feel about this, but I suppose-"

"Mother! Mother please, she's just someone I'm exchanging letters with, it's not - I'm not  _proposing."_

"You're not?" she asked. "Then how did she see the ring?"

Mordecai paused. His eyes widened. She'd caught him unprepared. "It - it was - at a - party. She's - her - her father is a butcher. I mean a jeweler. And I mentioned - I said - I have this unusual ring, let me show it to you, and - "

"You brought grandma's ring to a party?" Esther said, sounding as though she was right next to the phone. He imagined the two of them huddled over it at the kitchen table.

He froze. "No. Yes. The party was - the party was at my house."

The three of them went silent for a very long, very heavy moment.

Esther laughed.

"Well - well that sounds nice. I'm - um - I'm glad you're - glad you're being so social," his mother said.

Esther snorted and laughed harder.

Annoyed, he said, "Look - Mother, it's been good catching up, but I'm afraid I have to go. Please give my love to Rose, if you can. I -"

"Wait - Mordecai wait -" his mother said. "Please tell me about her."

"Mother really, I-"

" _Please_."

He began to protest but her voice had enough desperation in it to make him reconsider. He stammered, unsure what to say. "She's …well, she's Russian, and…" he drew a blank. He tried to find words to describe her, tried to really see her face, to feel her hand on his cheek. He shut his eyes and sank into the memory. "And … and she's just ..." he shrugged. "She's beautiful."

His mother gasped.

"Oh," she said, her voice tight. "Oh."

"Um..." he asked, unsure what upset her. "Did I do something wrong?"

"Your voice," she whispered. "My god, I can hear it in your voice."

"Your can hear  _what_  in my voice?" he asked, alarmed.

She went silent and handed the receiver Esther, who said, "What the hell'd you do to Mom you bas-" But she was interrupted by his mother reclaiming the telephone.

"I'm so happy," she choked, "I'm just so happy. I was so afraid - afraid that maybe you couldn't - or would never - but I always hoped-" her voice caught and went windy the way it did when she tried not to cry. She hated crying. "I love you, son," she choked. "I'm so -I'm so happy."

He looked furtively around his empty apartment. "Thank you. I - I love you too, Mother."

"I have to go now," she whispered. "I love you. Goodbye."

"Goodbye."

The phone changed hands.

"Hey," Esther barked. It was a rude  _hey_ , a Brooklyn  _hey_ , a you-wanna-make-something-of-it  _hey_.

He straightened. Lifted his chin. "Hey," he barked back.

She smiled. He could hear it.

"There has  _never ever_ been a party at your house, Mordecai Heller," she said, and hung up.

**000**


	15. an American custom

_Trigger warning if you are upset by subject matter concerning rape._

**000**

Days passed where he sat down to write a response, made a single mark, and immediately got up to do something, anything, else. He grew grateful for evenings of work, evenings where he was occupied and not hyper-aware of the blank sheet of paper burning away on his workbench.

He stared at the page. It was cold outside, wet and dreadful, and he'd opened his balcony windows to let some air into his stuffy, hot apartment. He tried to focus on what he'd written but all he heard were the sounds of the street, the rustling of the falling leaves. A thick rain-scented breeze snaked in and gently stroked his face. He shut his eyes in relief.

He put it aside but that didn't help. He couldn't relax. Even with the window open to the cold world everything remained too still, like time might stop and begin an eternal loop in this moment, trapping him in an endless purgatory standing of alone in his apartment, everything too still, nothing alive and reacting to him, nothing here but walls. It was a surreality that usually only descended on him once or twice a year, but had begun occurring in the last week with a startling regularity: this feeling that if he did not hear another living voice in his home he might just lose his mind.

The radio was always gravel and noise. Jazz this, jazz that, everything jazz influenced or sneakily alluding to jazz. Mordecai had come to despise jazz. It was the musical equivalent of the perfume a cheap whore uses to cover her body odor. A thinly manufactured wall of empty, cheerful warbling that failed to drown out all the death and ruin and blood on which the speakeasies were built. He had a phonograph and plenty of perfectly docile classical records, but he wanted a voice. He pushed the balcony doors mostly closed and went to his closet.

There they were.

In an alphabetized box at the bottom of his closet was a box of carefully hoarded blues records. It was a genre he would never admit to appreciating, much less listening to regularly. It was considered a lower class of music than someone of his projected station would dirty his ears with. At least jazz could put on an air of sophistication when it desired, but blues? The plaintive cries of the dirt poor and addicted? No. Blues music was base, but he enjoyed it for that baseness. The rawness of it, the regular rhythm, hypnotic and rolling and predictable. Those grizzled old voices howling  _I don't got a dime_  and  _what that woman done_  and  _the lawman gonna hunt me down_  calmed him in a way nothing else did.

He took a deep breath and faced the workbench.

Well.

He had to write  _something_.

He'd been waiting for the day he could sit down before the blank page and not feel like there was a wobbly sheet of cold aluminum in his chest, but apparently not feeling that way wasn't an option for him. Under normal circumstances he'd take this as a sign that he should just forget the whole thing but that apparently wasn't an option either, because every day he left his response unwritten that wobbly feeling got just a degree worse. Sometimes it became so intense he lost his appetite entirely, spending the better part of the day in a misery of sour hunger but utterly repelled by the thought of food. At first he thought he might have some sort of intermittent stomach bug and needed to see a doctor, but as time went on the more he suspected this loss of appetite and the letter were somehow related. The correlation was strong but what the two had to do with one another was beyond him. What he did know what that food was perishable and the longer this went on the more money he wasted on it, so he needed to resolve the issue sooner rather than later.

He sat down at the workbench, grabbed a pen, and steeled himself as he lowered it to paper.

_Julita -_

He wrote, and was immediately filled with the desire to do pretty much anything but this, but he was  _not_  going to watch another perfectly good steak rot in his icebox. Obviously approaching this however he had been approaching it wasn't working, so he needed a new method. He decided to do the practical thing and reduce the letter down to the barest points he could. He would then address those points calmly and rationally.

As best he could tell those points were:

1) Her lack of access to reliable postal service for five months. He was very curious about where she'd been. He was unsure whether or not he should ask.

2) Her curiosity about and missing of the ring. The first was easily enough addressed but the second confounded him. She would miss it, but in what sense, and why? He would not ask. He had a suspicion it would be an odd thing to ask.

3) His having the pistol and her request that he keep it for her. He was curious about the unusual weapon and could see nothing inappropriate in asking about it, so that was easy enough. Her request that he keep it for her until they meet again indicated they would, in fact, meet again. Was she sure of this? Did she know when? Could he fashion a method of asking that wasn't awful and obvious?

4) It was a pleasure working with him. Likewise. Easy.

5)  _I think of you often._  It was always on this line that his stomach crumpled in on itself. He had no idea how to respond to that. Everything sounded wrong. But at the very least he now had a general plan of attack, and that seemed to help his stomach not to crumple. As much.

He grit his teeth and began writing.

_Julita -_

_I appreciate your returning the ring to me, and in perfect condition. That was very considerate of you and I am glad to have it back. I am curious where your travels have taken you that a decent postal service is such a rarity, but perhaps such stories are better saved for less permanent mediums than paper. At your discretion, of course. In the interests of said discretion you should know your letters go through a translator on my end._

He read it over. That looked all right, he supposed. And it was only fair to inform her that a third party would be privy to the content of her future letters. If there were any.

_To answer your question the ring is a family heirloom. My great-grandmother's wedding ring, in fact. My great grandfather proposed - during a pogrom, of all things - when they lived in a place called the Pale of Settlement, in Russia. It was a Jewish ghetto under the Czars, if you are unfamiliar. I am a Jew, by the way._

It was a bit jarringly straightforward but for all he knew antisemitism might still have been rampant in Russia. It might be that Innochka had some negative opinion of Jews. He would rather know sooner rather than later, as bigotry was not something he suffered gladly. If anything could sour him on her it would be that. He could sell her fancy pistol for a nice stack of bills and forget her quite easily were that the case.

He almost hoped it was. Things would be simpler that way.

He continued writing.

_You mentioned the uniqueness of the setting itself, so I attempted some research on the subject, however I did not find much. In fact I was unable to find anything like it in the St. Louis Public Library's back catalog of jewelry-related books and catalogs, and three jewelers I brought it to didn't know much more. It appears the setting really is as unique as you observed. Thank you for bringing that to my attention._

Easy enough. This was going unexpectedly well! On to the issue of the gun.

_I must admit some curiosity regarding your pistol. I can say with a great deal of certainty that I've never seen anything similar to that gold python. I'm sure your travels put you in the path of many interesting weapons but that strikes me as custom work. If there is a story to it I would be interested to know it. In any case I am happy to keep it for you until you return._

He paused.

_If you happen to know when that might be._

He swallowed. Moved on.

_I enjoyed working with you as well, and I hope to be able to work with you again. You are one of my better associates._

And now on to the final point. He held the pen an inch above the paper, biting his lip. After a moment he began to write.

_I think of you_

He hovered for a long moment as he searched for a word. Nothing that wasn't offensively obvious or cloying sprung to mind, so his pen slowly lowered and made a period.

_I think of you._

_-Max_

He scanned the letter once - only once - before forcing himself to stuff it in an envelope, address it, and walk it down to the post office, his stomach a jar of fireflies. He handed it to the clerk who turned and threw it into a sorting bin. The moment it vanished from view, irretrievable, irrevokable, the fireflies in his stomach mutated into hunger pangs. He realized he was ravenous nearly to the point of nausea, not having eaten since the previous morning's choked-down oatmeal. Now that the letter was out of his hands it seemed his appetite had returned with animal vengeance. He craved a rare, bloody steak and a huge sweet potato and some sort of buttered greens, like a born southerner.

Letter sent, he'd have thought he could relax, but from that day on he lived a life that felt like a dangling participle, a sentence with no period. Though well fed he ambled through his days in a queer sort of suspension. When would she reply? Would she reply at all? It harried him, made him tense, until he realized it was totally out of his hands. The ball, as they said, was in her court. There was some release in this, because the longer it was out of his hands the less likely it was that he would screw it all up, would do something odd or repellent or ignorant that would make her realize what a joke he was. What a joke he must have been, given the way everyone laughed at him.

He didn't understand it. Mitzi, Viktor, Asa, Nico and Serafine - he could kill any one of them coldly and without a second thought but still they laughed at him.  _You really must be a joke_ , he started in on himself.  _No matter what_ y _ou're toothless and crippled and powerless just like your father and everyone knows exactly how but you. It's only a matter of time until Innochka sees it and you become a thing she mocks, you pathetic schoolboy._

"No," he muttered beneath his breath.

He stopped dead in his tracks, which in this case happened to be before the large display window of a bookstore. He turned to it as though he saw something that interested him, and under this calm guise he took a hammer to that betraying part of his mind. He held it down and pounded at its skull until it seized violently and died - the way he'd committed his first murder. Other times he drugged it with chloroform and chained it inside a car which he then set ablaze, as he' done to Serafine. Since it always came back to life eventually he made a point of repeatedly slaying this mental Judas using the methods by which he'd killed people he truly hated. He hated that whinging, self-pitying part of himself more than he hated any living person on Earth, and thousands of his most hateful murders were too good for it, but for years now he'd made a point of disproving this voice that insisted he was worthless with what made him of great value.

He looked at himself in the window. Pushed his glasses up, tilted his hat down, let the curtain descend. He met his own eyes in the window and gave a single nod, complete once more. As he walked it began to snow again. The new fresh powder covered his footprints as though the universe were conspiring the hide him, and he pretended for a long and satisfying moment that the air itself knew he was  _the impartial blade upon which nature cut the wheat from the chaff -_ Atlas's beautiful words branded forever across his mind. He hadn't engaged in this fancy for years, inflating his sense of self until he became a physical representation of a natural force, the serene daytime guise of calculated death. He missed the slick sense of danger it gave him, so he indulged it.

The serene daytime guise of calculated death turned soundlessly around the corner to his apartment building just as it began to snow too heavily to feel properly threatening. The fearsome avatar of destruction held on to the bannister in case he slipped on the concrete steps, fumbled with and dropped his keys in the snow. Upon reaching the lobby death itself slid off his suddenly sweltering overcoat and with trepidation unlocked his mailbox, expecting nothing, but gasping in a most un-deathlike manner when he saw a gold envelope that could be nothing else but what it was.

Swift oblivion snatched the letter up and fumbled his mailbox closed, heart pounding. He punched the elevator, barely able to wait till the doors closed before slitting it cleanly open, and there it was, just as he'd hoped - a thick and lingering waft of that specific savory vanilla. He closed his eyes. The darkest fate in St. Louis spent ten floors of a twelve floor elevator ride obsessively huffing an envelope, then stalked to his front door, let himself in, and fell into his armchair with it. He cursed the sudden snowstorm that meant he couldn't race directly to the translator's office. But he could still hold it to his face and inhale until the last of the scent was gone, and that was exactly what the impartial blade did.

Shiva himself, flummoxed by perfume on paper.

 _Pervert,_  he thought ruefully.  _What you are doing right now is actually perverted, you pervert._

He took the letter down to the translator as soon as the weather cleared.

"Welcome back, Max," said the translator, whose name according to the door was P. Martin Somerhaus. He twisted a finger in his long, sagely white mustache.

Mordecai paused in the doorway. "You sound surprised."

P. Martin Somerhaus interlaced his long bony fingers. "I wasn't counting on you for repeat business, no. There's only one document ahead of you today, could I perhaps interest you in the going rate?"

"I'd like that, thank you."

"Very well. Leave it here and come back in an hour."

Mordecai occupied himself with tea at the cafe across the street, and with fifteen minutes to kill a brief turn around the pawn shop next door to the office. He found himself looking at the rings, and then a case of small pistols, none of which held a candle to Innochka's. The nicest pistol had a tag for a goodly amount that was only a fraction of what he estimated hers to be worth. At the very least there was some money in it for him should she turn out to be a bigot.

After the alloted hour Mordecai returned to the office, paid, and stood in the lobby reading, unable to wait. He took a look at Inncohka's version one last time. At the top of the page was a tiny coiled serpent monogrammed around IV, the Roman numeral for four. He puzzled over this for a moment before reading the translation:

_Max -_

_It's good to hear from you. I'm glad the ring made it to you safely._

_We often spend a lot of time deep in the jungles of Brazil. There are certain groups there we do business with. That's all I'll say here._

_Thanks for the story of the ring. That was a nice story. Are you a devout Jew? Many of the men I work with are devout and wear crosses despite the path we walk, but I've never heard of this from a Jew. It's true what they say, in America anything is possible._

_I had the pistol made, yes. I carry that weapon on formal want a story about it? It has many stories! But you asked about the python, so the story about it is this: someone once compared me to a python. He meant this as a terrible insult, but instead I found the comparison apt and amusing so I took it as my own. It is my symbol now. I love them very much for this. If I had a place to keep a live python I would buy one. I would wear it around my neck and go to the expensive shops._

_Thank you for keeping the gun for me till we work together again. You are also one of my favorite associates. Though I am puzzled how you use this word. I don't kiss associates on the mouth. Is this an American custom?_

_-Julita_

His eyes went wide.

"Everything all right, Max?" the translator asked smoothly.

Mordecai didn't reply. Stared at the letter.

"Well then, is there anything else I can help you with?" P. Martin Somerhaus asked.

"No," Mordecai chortled. "Thanks."

"Thank you for your patronage, sir. Watch the step on the way out."

Mordecai did not watch the step as instructed and found himself tumbling into the snowbank piled next to the sidewalk. He held the letter aloft and out of the snow, his main concern not for how ridiculous he looked, but that the letter did not get wet. With his other hand he flailed about, trying to find something with which he could pull himself up. A hand gripped his and pulled. The second he felt this shame rippled through him and he remembered to be humiliated - that, at the very least, was a  _familiar_  feeling.

"I warned you to watch the step, sir," P. Martin Somerhaus said as he pulled Mordecai upright.

"You - you should have that fixed!" Mordecai blustered. "That's a dangerous- a dangerous heath hazard!" he said, angrily brushing off his coat. "A hazard to the public health. That can't possibly be city code. I didn't trip because I was  _distracted_ , all right? I'm sure everyone trips over it."

"They do, sir, hence the warning."

"There shouldn't have to be a warning because you shouldn't have a thing people trip over in front of your office! It's irresponsible and unprofessional!"

"Oh it absolutely is," he replied, chuckling softly. "Don't worry, I've seen far less graceful tumbles than yours."

"You do not seem concerned, sir!" Mordecai snapped. "You seem  _entertained!_ Well you should be concerned! One of these days someone far more litigious than I am will trip on that and break his legs and sue you right out of business! Let's see how amused you are then! Good day!" he huffed, turned on his heel, and stalked down the street. It was only a middling outburst at best and had barely given him a moment's relief from the phrases repeating in his head like a skipping record:  _I don't kiss associates on the mouth I don't kiss associates on the mouth I don't kiss associates on the mouth is that an American custom?_

What word was he supposed to use? Was there another term for someone you'd worked with and at one point kissed with enthusiasm? Did "friend" cover it? That didn't seem right either. Then…then what? There had to be some sort of word, some sort of magical phrase Mitzi would know.

 _Mitzi!_ He thought, but no. Her counsel was not and would never be an option. The woman's pride was broken. He knew this because he was the one that did the breaking.

A series of skirmishes escalated into madness by pure desperation on the part of Lackadaisy. Though she took enormous losses each time Mitzi persisted with doggedness of a person who'd lost her mind, a possibility Mordecai raised to Sweet himself. But Sweet's employer was not amused, was close to ordering Mitzi done, and would likely order Mordecai to do the doing.

He tried not to care. He really made a valiant effort. But at the end of the day the lingering respect he had for Atlas trumped his flimsy indifference. It wasn't that he had any love for Mitzi, much the opposite. He couldn't stand the woman, but for years it has been his job to make sure that no harm came to her. It was his solemn duty to Atlas, something he'd initially been  _honored_  by. He'd never failed in that job, never shirked that duty, and he realized he had no plans to start. So action had to be taken before he was faced with a situation where he'd have harm her by his own hand.

He slipped into her bedroom late one night, silent as a shadow, the jazz record she had on masking his entry. She brushed her hair methodically in the mirror of her vanity, eyes empty and tired.  _She looks old_ , Mordecai mused before stepping out from the shadows. In one smooth, gentle motion he clapped one gloved hand over her mouth and the other around her neck. Before she could even scream he'd drawn her head back against his chest, forcing her to look up at him. Her eyes widened in terror as she felt his hand tighten around her throat.

"Here's how fast it'll happen when it happens," he whispered down at her. She made an infuriated sound and struggled against him, arms flailing, trying to swat at him behind her back. "Stop that. Mitzi- Mitzi, stop struggling. I  _will_  kill you, Mitzi." She eyes narrowed, her brow furrowed, and she screamed against his hand,flailing her arms, loudly kicking over the makeup and perfume bottles on her vanity.

"Stop it!" he commanded, but it did no good. She didn't listen. She didn't believe him, he realized. She would never believe him. She knew how he felt about Atlas, how seriously he took his word to that man, and that word was of more importance to him than any job. She knew he would never kill her. He wouldn't even  _harm_  her.

So he had to scare her.

" _Mitzi_ ," he growled down into her face in a tone he'd never used outside of work. She stopped struggling and looked up at him, wide-eyed. He forced her up and off the bench. She struggled and kicked and pulled at him but he forced her onto the bed face down and pinned her there, twisting her arm behind her back, his hand clamped to her mouth. He leaned close to her ear.

"How well do you think you know me?" he whispered softly. She looked up over her shoulder at him, bewildered. It would have been more effective had he  _touched_  her in some way but he couldn't bring himself to do it. "How do you know I haven't been waiting for an excuse to …to … do this?"

Mitzi glared up at him, dripping skepticism. Well, he should have known she wouldn't buy that. Time for plan B.

" _I_  haven't, no. But  _Asa_  has. And if you continue to be a problem I can promise you he'll be there when the end comes. There'll be a  _train_ , Mitzi, and Asa will be the conductor. Are you understanding me?"

The lie had the desired effect. She froze the way she did when she was truly terrified. The way she did when there were gunshots in the next room.

Mordecai met her eyes and nodded. "Yes. Asa will be there. Lots of men will be there. Anything in Marigold that  _can_  be there  _will_  be. If you are under the illusion that being Atlas's wife will keep that row of men from being the last thing you experience, you are very wrong."

Mitzi's eyes were the size of saucers, wide with horror. She didn't respond but he could hear her.  _They wouldn't._

"Yes they would, Mitzi. They will. You don't hear the way they talk, they plans they make. But I do. I am privy to it all, every last disgusting word of it, and if the thought of Atlas May's wife put such an end didn't horrify me I'd just let them have you. I'd walk away knowing you brought it on yourself."

She shut her eyes tightly. Her mascara began to leak down her cheek.

"Crying won't help you when they come for you. I can't stop them, Mitzi. All I can do is  _not participate_. Are you understanding me?" When she didn't respond he shook her. " _Are you understanding me?"_

She shook her head.

"Give  _up_. Atlas wanted you to be his wife, not run his estate.  _Find some other way to honor him_ ," he said, exasperated, a note of begging in his voice. "Couldn't you have just found some  _other_  way to honor him? Write a new song, do a new dance? Anything other than try to wear his very shoes? You were always such a  _regretfully stupid_  person, Mitzi. But for once in your life be smart and listen to me. I can't stop what's coming for you now if you persist." He leaned back down to her ear to whisper to her. "If you persist, when you join Atlas in the hereafter, you'll be so torn apart and used up  _he won't want you_."

She flinched at this and cried out against his hand. It was a cry of sudden injury, as though he'd stomped on her foot. It startled him. Her eyes shut tightly. Slowly she brought her one free hand up and tapped the hand that was over her mouth.

His grip loosened slightly. "Scream and you won't like what happens."

She tapped his hand again. He released her mouth, but to his puzzlement she didn't say anything. She fumbled with his sleeve for some reason, moving it up his wrist, touching him gently as though taking his pulse.

"Mitzi-?" he began, and she looked at him, and he saw something in her eyes that nearly stopped his heart. A look of unhinged animal hatred so deep and pure and homicidal that it destroyed an assumption that he didn't know he had about her, that deep down  _she_ , of all people, was probably  _good_. The destruction of that heretofore unrealized assumption paired with the strangeness of her gentle touch perplexed him long enough for Mitzi to bare her teeth and sink them into his wrist.

He cried out and tried to tear his arm away but she clawed at him and pushed her teeth down on him harder, shaking her head back and forth like a dog, like she was trying to rip the very flesh from his bones. He yelped when a horrifying acidic fuzz shot up his arm as her tooth dragged across a nerve. He panicked and began hitting her, twisted his hand into her hair and yanked. Some of it ripped out in his hand.

"I'll rip it out Mitzi I'll rip it out  _I'll rip it all out if you don't let go_  - " he chanted. He tore a bit more to show her he was serious and she released him, spitting blood. "What the hell has gotten into you!" he scolded, wrenching her head back, forcing her to look up at him. He shook her head. "I'm trying to help you."

"The way you helped Viktor?" she growled.

He rolled his eyes. "Yes, the way I helped Viktor.  _The way I help_. Help the both of you should be grateful for. I was the only person that cared if Viktor came to an untimely end, and now I'm the only person left that cares whether or not you're raped to death. How's  _that_  for irony, Mitzi? You'd think someone besides me would care enough about you to keep you from stepping in front of a  _train,_  but no one does. And what do I get for my efforts but  _this?_ " he said, shoving his bloodied, torn up wrist in her face. He released her in disgust, letting her fall back down to the bed. He rose up off of her. She hurriedly elbowed her way over to the bedside table. "I wash my hands of you, Mitzi May.  _Mary-Ellen_. I won't stand between you and the violation you're courting any longer."

She opened the drawer of the bedside table and turned to him in shock.

"Looking for this?" Mordecai asked, holding up her pistol. He strolled to the window. "The bedside table. Really? You've  _never_  been cut out for this, Mitzi, not for an instant. How many times did I ask you to keep it somewhere less obvious?" With a flick of his wrist he tossed the gun out the open window he'd slipped through. "Whoops."

She was outraged. Her eyes burned. He put on his hat. It was time for the coup de gras. All he had to do was lift his chin, look her in the eye, and say one word:

" _Zib_."

She balled her hands into fists, opened her mouth to say something, but whatever it was died in her throat. Her eyes lost their fire. Her hands slowly uncurled and she lowered her head to the bed, palms open. She just lay there looking at him with the hopelessness of a dying animal.

She closed her eyes.

He nearly breathed a sigh of relief.

"Thank you, Mitzi," he said, and put on his hat. "Good day."

He slipped out the window. One week later the Little Daisy cafe went up for sale. He wasn't exactly in the position to show up on Mitzi's doorstep asking for social interpretation now.  _For old time's sake!_  He'd say, right before she clawed his eyes out of their sockets. No, he thought as he looked down at that final sentence. He'd have to figure this one out for himself.

_Is this an American custom?_

Maybe…maybe he could just go with that.

**000**


	16. recursive goodness

_Julita-_

_I cannot quite express to you -_

Mordecai began

_\- how delighted I am that you have a pistol specially designated for formal occasions._

It was true. The thought of Innochka strolling along the Champs-Elysees, formal pistol on hand and a python around her neck, truly delighted him - if the feeling that one is being filled up with electric bubbles was commonly regarded as delight. He found himself picturing her this way while he was on endless stakeouts, distracting him when he ran figures for Marigold's books.

He took a black olive from the plate next to him and continued.

_I am actually a bit upset I didn't think of it myself . I am more than a bit upset. As a matter of fact I am beside myself. This seems to be such an obvious requirement for my position that I am tempted to draw up plans for a formal pistol of my own._

That was also true. He found the concept ingenious. He read back over the letter thus far and decided it acceptable. Indeed it was going far better than the last one.

_I am Jewish, really in no way devout, but I do keep kosher. Not for any sentimental purpose, it's a just superior method of eating. Really much healthier than pork on everything. Believe me, I've seen what pigs eat, you want no part of it._

_Insofar as actual spirituality is concerned I am unconvinced by religion as a whole. I've seen nothing to indicate any sort of afterlife, and it seems that if anyone is in a position to have seen something it would be me. Perhaps your experience differs._

He held his breath. And now … now on to the next thing.

_Regarding our goodbye-_

He continued to hold his breath, this letter's period of relative ease screeching to a halt. He had no idea how he was supposed to claw down into his simmering cauldron of words and feelings and retrieve a logical thought. He found himself thankful, as ever, for the medium in which this communication took place. All she would see were words on paper, not the anxious mess who'd put them there. He took an olive from the plate but suddenly found the very concept of olives, of food, utterly repellent.

"No no no," he muttered to himself. "Not doing that again. Write. Write something factual."

He picked up the pen and steeled himself.

_No, it's not American custom._

Factually true.

_I'm not in the habit of kissing associates. Far, far from it._

Factually true.

_That was a new experience for me._

Factually true.

His heart pounded as he wrote the next line:

_It seems it was for you too?_

He resisted the urge to crumple the letter up and forced himself to keep writing. Suddenly a queer thought occurred to him. Perhaps something funny or lighthearted was in order after such a delicate subject? Humor wasn't exactly his strong suit, but surely he could manage something. He thought for a moment. When he tried to recall some specific thing she'd laughed at during their time together he couldn't. He only recalled his relief and gratitude that it wasn't him. There was something that consistently made her smile, however.

_I hope you are well despite the probable lack of Mississippi riverboats where you are. I do not envy you that struggle._

_-Max_

He nodded, pleased with himself. He wasn't sure if it was funny per se but it certainly wasn't offensive, and it showed he was paying attention. In fact the little crooked smile she got whenever she saw a riverboat was one of his clearest memories of her face.

**000**

Her reply came the day after Christmas.

He supposed it fit that, being a Jew, such a present wouldn't arrive on Christmas day proper. Though there was never anything waiting under a tree for him - well, not since Lackadaisy and the familial affectations therein - he still….well, he sort of enjoyed Christmas. The sentiment of the holiday itself was useless claptrap but the sense of a break in the normal routine of the world was pleasant. He'd spent every Christmas since Atlas's death alone in his apartment looking at rows of warmly lit windows, everything covered in soft mounds of fresh snow, basking in the residual glow of a world merrily at pause for a day. Save for particularly lousy years that glow extended to the days to either side of Christmas, so it was in the spirit of this secret pleasure that he opened her letter, heart quickening in anticipation of her scent. She must have directly sprayed the paper with her perfume, there was no way it just naturally smelled like that. Did she know what it did to him? She had to. So she was  _manipulating_  him with it.

He paused. He wasn't sure how he felt about that. He wasn't sure how he  _should_  feel about that. Women did things like this, didn't they? Little tricksy things like this? With the aim of…what? Why did she want him to  _smell_ her? Did she like the thought of how weak he went when her scent filled his head? How it obliterated whatever was in it? Did she know about that specifically or was it just a guess? Was she just guessing at how best to manipulate him from a distance?

He frowned down at the letter. He supposed the real question was, if she was manipulating him, was it a manipulation he consented to? He didn't get the sense she meant anything deceptive by it. She wasn't  _lying_  about her perfume, after all. She likely took pleasure in imagining him opening it and he … well, he liked opening it, and he liked imagining her imagining him opening it. So … so that was good. It was, in fact,  _recursively_  good. He pressed the letter to his face. Yes, everything about this perfumed letters business was good, he decided. He had the strangest impulse: to lay on his bed with his head on the letter, to just…lay there like that.

"Oh for crying out loud," he snapped, suddenly horrified at himself. He rose from the armchair and hurriedly stuffed the letter in a drawer until he could take it to the translator. He took it out, inhaled once more, then really stuffed it in a drawer until he could take it to the translator.

"When are you going to fix your step?" Mordecai asked as he strode into P. Martin Somerhaus's office when business opened once more.

P. Martin Somerhaus adjusted his thick spectacles and smiled like the inscrutable Chinese sage he seemed determined to ape. "Back again? You certainly are a dark horse, Max."

"Are you aware you're the only Russian translator within fifty miles of St. Louis?"

He grinned and templed his fingers. "Thank you kindly, but not quite. If you go to the linguistics department of University of Missouri you'll find some graduate students more than willing to help you for a small fee."

"Good to know, but I feel they may lack your expertise," Mordecai said, handing him the letter. "And discretion. When can you have this to me?"

"There's a considerable backlog of holiday work. Three days?" The sage held up his hand. "Before you reach for your wallet I must refuse. Accepting that amount of money was … unethical of me."

"How much was it?"

"Sixty dollars.`

"Well if sixty dollars was unethical to accept seventy would be positively immoral."

P. Martin Somherhaus smiled. "I like you, Max."

Mordecai took out his wallet. "I imagine you would," he said with a note of bitterness.

"No no no, please, put that away. You've become a regular, it's Christmas, and her letters are obviously of importance to you." He winked. "Give me fifteen minutes."

Mordecai raised his eyebrows. "Thank you." Though he appreciated the special exception he wasn't sure how he felt about the man's familiarity. Asa provided Mordecai with plenty of knowing winks and he wasn't in the market for any more. But in the spirit of things, and of getting his letter sooner rather than later, he accepted the offer, and in fifteen minutes paid and left. He crossed the path to the cafe but it was closed. So he stood under the awning in the cold and read.

_Max -_

_Yes, you must have a formal 'd wear one well. I'm sure you'll design something perfect. You always look very sharp, very beautiful. I like this about you very much._

He made a sound which his brain had not given his mouth clearance to make. It was something between a laugh and … and whatever sound he made when he read something that made him feel like someone had taken a crowbar made of victory to his knees, which was the only thing that explained their current weakness.

_Ah, you keep kosher! No, this is terrible. With my eyes closed I can raise a hog from piglet to adult, butcher it, cook it thirty ways and preserve the rest for winter larder. I know everything about a pig. You would have starved to death where I am from. All we had was pork and snow._

_I don't believe in any church but I believe in Hell. I think the Devil and I will get along fine. Sometimes I cursed bad customers down to Hell before I dispatched them from the store, so you see I sent him a lot of business. But I don't do that anymore._

He smiled. He liked the image of Innochka, formal pistol and python present, spitting a Russian curse before putting some idiot to a swift end. She did everything with such panache.

_I must be honest and say I've kissed an associate before but never because I wanted to._

"What?" he whispered, his voice a misty cloud in the cold. "Wait, what?"

He backtracked along that sentence a few times. What did that mean? She'd been compelled by the job to kiss him. That kiss before Orlov's prurient gaze was part of the job but what it turned into still burned him, to say nothing of the kiss before she left. Why did she say she didn't kiss associates on the mouth when she clearly did, willingly or not? Had she lied? Why had she indicated he was somehow special when he wasn't? Unless it was her  _wanting_  to kiss him that made him diff -

" _Oh_ ," Mordecai said. His mouth curled into a crooked smile and he put two gloved fingers to it, almost daintily. She  _wanted_  to kiss him. Wanted to kiss  _him_. How long had she wanted to kiss him? It hadn't crossed his mind until their work put it there, but had she wanted to kiss him before that point? When had it started for her? Was she just sitting there the whole time wanting to kiss him? And if she had been…why? What was it about him that made her want to kiss him? Was that something he could ask? It seemed like something he could never, ever ask. So that would remain a mystery, however it was clear that her wanting to kiss him classified him outside what she categorized as an 'associate.' She fell outside his definition of one too, and … and for the same reason, when it came down to it. That meant they were on the same page about what they  _weren't_ , at the very least.

He continued reading.

_The doctor has me on vitamins to help with my lack of boats. Thank you for your concern! You are funny. It makes me so happy to get your letters, Max. Please keep writing to me._

_-Julita_

_PS: I have been wondering - why did you pull my hair the way you did in the bird cage?_

He read the last sentence again. He'd pulled her hair? It took him a moment to recall grabbing her braid, and how damned  _infuriating_  that braid was. If his concern did not come across the first time due to the language barrier he would certainly take a moment to elucidate to her why, exactly, that braid was unacceptable. He hated thinking about it, and that hatred carried him back to his apartment building, up all twelve flights of stairs because in the dead of winter he took his physical exertion where he could get it, to his workbench, pen to paper.

_Innochka -_

_I touched your hair in the bird cage because that braid is a horribly dangerous insult to your professionalism. I don't understand how you could feel comfortable with what is essentially a piece of rope permanently attached your head. Just what can be done to us if we have a rope permanently attached to our head? Well, we can more easily be caught, that's for certain. We could be grabbed and dragged off somewhere to be violated by some brute. Hell, we could be strangled with it. Strangled with our own hair. Why would you court this possibility, Innochka? Have you no sense of self-preservation or are you really just that vain? Not that your vanity hasn't paid off, you're wonderful to look at, to say nothing of smell, but to look at especially. I actually wish you were here now so I could look at you more, is how good you are to look at. I didn't see you enough when you were here. I would like to see you more. I would like a photograph of you._

He blinked, then stopped and read over what he'd just written. He crumpled it up and threw it out, face burning. It sat in the wastebasket, greasy and mocking and pathetic, nagging him about what might happen should someone come across it in the building's trash. He plucked the crumpled letter out of the wastebasket and went to the kitchen, where he tossed it into the sink and opened a window. He opened the shelf next to the stove, located a box of matches, lit one, and dropped it on top of the ball of paper. He watched until it burnt away into crisp black nothing and then washed it away down the sink.

**000**

_Julita-_

_Thank you for your compliment regarding my appearance. Likewise. You're really very lovely. And though I will never taste it I'm sure you cook pork beautifully. I make very good French toast. If you ever need French toast made I can do that for you._

_Your religious beliefs are unusual. Why don't you curse your customers anymore? I take it you are putting a deposit down on some sort of favoritism from Satan, so that seems like an account you'd want to keep full._

_Regarding associates (or not, as the case may be):_

He hesitated before continuing, turning the pen over and over in his hand. He glanced at her letter. That line standing alone seemed to demand a response. He held his breath. Since she had admitted to wanting to kiss him, he supposed it would be all right, even  _called for_ , to say:

_I wanted to kiss you as well._

Well. Well that was certainly written down. Now the next bit, lest she think he suffered from typical male fickleness, because boy didn't he. He figured this was worth highlighting, a selling point, though he avoided pinpointing to himself what, exactly, it was he was hawking.

_I've never wanted to kiss anyone before, associate or not. I have been made to understand that am somewhat unusual in this respect._

He looked at this sentence. It was honest, but it seemed somewhat spare. After a moment he added:

_So you are very unique to me._

He looked at this for a long moment before giving it a firm nod and continuing. He would like to hear that. Anyone would like to hear that.

_The doctor has you on vitamins to help with your lack of boats? Are they, by chance … B vitamins?_

_If that pun does not translate I apologize. If that pun does translate I also apologize._

_I also look forward to your letters. And the perfume in your letters. That is a manipulation I consent to for the sake of the recursive goodness it provides. Please continue._

_-Max_

_PS: Regarding your hair, I cannot implore you strongly enough to cut it. Even with it pinned it up the long braid could easily unravel and provide a hold for someone much larger and stronger than you. I understand that you like the way it looks but the length concerns me. In the bird cage I was pleading with you to do something about it._

Well. That was it then. Letter finished. He hurriedly stuffed it into an envelope before he changed his mind and walked it down to the post office. The line was interminable, but the wait at this post office in particular was made bearable by the wall of daily newspapers from all over the world. That post office was the only place outside the public library that provided such a service. He enjoyed reading the London headlines, trying to gather what he could of a paper from Berlin, skimming the news from New York. There were more localized papers as well, news from Memphis and Nashville and New Orle -

Mordecai's eyes widened when they fell on  _The Orleaner_  and it's headline:

_Natasha Orlov, 20, Daughter of Missing Antiquities Dealer Found Dead in French Quarter._

**000**


	17. languages and hemispheres

Well.

It was concerning.

It wasn't cause for  _alarm,_  but it was a cause for concern.

Mordecai and Asa pored over the New Orleans newspaper sitting on the desk between them.

"Why wait this long to off the daughter?" Sweet mused. "Orlov is dead, who are they trying to send a message to?"

Mordecai frowned. "I suppose it's possible the daughter was in on the operation somehow and was killed on her own merits."

"The body of Natasha Orlov was found strangled behind her dormitory after being reported missing from a party." Asa read, sounding skeptical. "From the list of clubs and activities she was involved in I'm not sure where a twenty year old girl would find the time to get herself murdered."

"You obviously never spent any time around Miss Ivy Pepper."

"Touche. But tell me again what you remember about their conversation before Totsy put a hole in him?"

Mordecai shot him a look at the name. "Not much. A lot of yelling in Russian. He mentioned that 'they' were going to kill his daughter, but he didn't mention who 'they' were, or specifically why. Though he…"

"He what?"

Mordecai hesitated. "He seemed to be trying to warn me of something."

Asa raised his eyebrows. "You never mentioned this before."

"I wrote it off as him stalling by trying to turn Innochka and I against one another." Mordecai smirked. "There wasn't going to be a very high outcome for success on that front."

Asa's mouth twisted into a smile that was trying its best not to be. He cleared his throat. "What did he say?"

Mordecai paused, thinking. "Mostly variations on 'you don't know what's really happening here' and 'you don't know what she's really after.'"

Asa looked stunned. "And you put absolutely no stock in that  _why?_ "

Mordecai froze. Opened his hands. "I - "

Asa held up his hand. "Don't worry, I know why. Look kid, just because a woman has her hand on your cock doesn't mean she's above questioning."

Mordecai jerked like he'd been hit. "I - I - Asa - at -  _at no point did she_  -"

Asa grinned. "No? That's a shame."

Mordecai scowled. He hated when Asa tricked him into revealing himself this way. He hated Asa's stupid grinning smug face. "Might we get on with it?" he asked.

"Get on with what? There's nothing to be gotten on with," Asa said, lighting a cigar. "This is all just speculation. I mean hell, unless there's any loose ends you're aware of, it could just be a coincidence."

Mordecai shook his head. "Nothing springs to mind, no."

Asa made a face and a sound Mordecai had no idea how to interpret. "What does that mean?" Mordecai asked.

"It means I don't think your mind is gonna spring up with much. I think you're a bit hazy on that night. I think a tank could have crashed through the room and you wouldn't have picked up on it." Asa chuckled and took a cigar from a case on his desk.

"Well thank you for your  _opinion_  but I'm the best option you have at the moment,  _sir,_ " Mordecai balked. "If you'd like more information about that night I'd direct you to the other parties present but sadly they've all washed out into the Gulf of Mexico by now. So if Midnight Mystery Radio Hour is finished I'll be glad to be on my way. I've had enough  _pointless speculation_  for one evening."

"All right then, get on out of here. Let me know if you think of anything."

"Through this  _haze_? Not likely," Mordecai said, and left.

**000**

But it grated on him.

It wasn't that he'd never before dwelt on the mysteries of that night.  _Had_ the antiquities dealer indeed been trying to warn him about something? And if so, did it matter? What could he possibly have to warn  _him_  about? Orlov likely assumed Mordecai was far more involved with Innochka's organization than he actually was. He was trying to lure his life back with nuggets of information, not knowing he could not sell Mordecai what he had no interest in buying? And, Mordecai figured, that was why the Russian organization sent him along with her to New Orleans instead of one of her own brethren. If Orlov would reveal information to Innochka that was not of Marigold's concern, what better way to keep that information private than to send her along with a partner who couldn't understand a word of it? That was the conclusion he'd come to, in any case. Not only did he deign to question it further, he settled into the assumption that not questioning it had been an unspoken part of his job description, leaving him free to dwell on the other more interesting parts of that evening.

Yet still…why  _had_  Innochka shot Orlov? Mordecai came away with … well, with the impression that she hadn't quite meant to do it. If so it was terribly unprofessional of her. Uncharacteristically unprofessional of her from what he had seen, but then how much had he really seen? He didn't know her, after all.

He stopped at the foot of the stairs leading up to his building.

_He didn't know her._

And he didn't know why this came as a surprise to him. Of course he didn't know her, he'd spent all of a few days with her and only read a few hundred of her words. So where did this sense of deep familiarity come from?

His eyes widened.

Was that what happened when you kissed someone? Did it do something to the brain? Did it cast some illusion of knowing that person better than you actually did, of liking them more than you actually might? Empirical evidence seemed to support this theory, seeing how often kissing and kisses were mentioned in music and books and radio dramas. If so, that was…well, it was  _sinister,_  was what it was. A sinister ploy on the part of nature to … to get babies made, he supposed.

He considered this for a moment. Was this how the world really was? Men and women chasing one another around, brains tricked by one another's kisses? Well! He'd certainly not fall victim to  _that._  No, he was onto nature's little scheme. He was well aware that he barely knew Innochka, and there could be kisses for weeks but there'd never be any babies from  _him._

"Nice try," he muttered to nature as he turned the final flight of stairs to his apartment. When he got in he stripped off his coat and opened the window for a moment to get some air. From this particular window he could see the Mississippi should he crane his neck just so, and he did when he saw a speck of slow-moving white out of the corner of his eye: a fat tiered riverboat lazily navigating patches of ice.

He smiled.

He made a point of checking the New Orleans papers every morning for weeks for updates on the Nastasha Orlov case. Actual updates were few and far between, but that didn't keep the papers from speculating constantly about her. Nothing sold papers like the violent death of a beautiful young rich girl, even if they had to resort to ever more ridiculous theories about what happened. The more ridiculous the better, Mordecai figured. He'd rather the NOPD waste their time chasing ghostly hobo stranglers than finding something that might lead back to anyone he knew. The way he saw it, the best case scenario seemed to be that it  _was_  a ghostly hobo strangler. Natasha's death was damned sloppy for a hit. Then again it may have been purposely ordered that way.

Mordecai cringed. He wasn't sure there was an amount of money he could be offered to strangle an Ivy Pepper type and leave her body between a rusting car and a pile of garbage. He'd never killed a woman before. Well, not before Serafine, but she didn't count. Serafine may have been a woman but she was no lady. This Natasha seemed on her way to ladyhood - and despite that her father was a pervert, which was admirable! Nevertheless there were men in this line of work with far less scruples than him, willing to do all manner of nastiness for the right price. The man who killed Natasha Orlov probably did it with a grin for a few bottles of booze.

He shook his head. Alcohol really  _was_ a social problem. Good thing it was illegal.

**000**

Weeks passed. Work was surprisingly slow. His first year at Marigold was such a nonstop murder spree that he still had trouble adjusting to the slower pace of relative peacetime. But truth be told he preferred it that way. He liked it when the extent of his hands-on work was to linger at a table in the same restaurant as a man who required a point driven home. He liked seeing the color drain from the man's face because that meant the day's work was done, and easily. He even got a nice beef wellington out of the deal on Marigold's dime. He could go back to the hotel and sink blissfully into tax shelters and money laundering. It made for a pleasantly monotonous stretch of time.

Her letter arrived in mid February, a thin golden envelope he nearly didn't see between a bill and an advertisement. He slid it into his jacket pocket, turned on his heel, and headed directly to P. Martin Somerhaus's office.

"Max," he said.

"Mr. Somerhaus."

"Give it here."

He opened the letter and was hit with her vanilla scent. He suddenly realized that he had to give the letter to the translator now and could not linger with it. P. Martin Somerhaus would get to enjoy  _his_  perfumed letter. He scowled as he handed it over.

"How does two hours….sound?" P. Martin Somerhaus asked carefully, seeing Mordecai's expression. "Is everything all right, sir?"

"Yes, everything's fine," Mordecai said. "Two hours will be fine, thank you." It wasn't fine at all, the scent would be completely gone by then, but what was he going to do? Demand it back so he could  _smell it_ more?

"Good," the translator said. "If you need to kill some time a new gift shop opened up three doors down. It has quite the selection of delightful little doodads."

"Good suggestion. Maybe next time." He put his hat back on and turned out the door, but stopped himself before crossing the threshold. "When  _you_ have some time to kill you ought to fix your front step.

P. Martin Somherhaus looked up at Mordecai and smiled. "Good suggestion. Maybe next time."

Mordecai put on his hat to leave but paused. "I must admit I am curious why you leave it unrepaired. You're not a stupid man. You have to be aware of the risk this poses to your business. Or yourself. You're just as likely to fall and break your ankle as any of your customers."

"True."

"It seems that you get some sort of perverse thrill out of it," Mordecai began. He turned and narrowed his eyes at the translator, this man who had access to the most deeply personal exchange in his life but about whom he knew so little. "Are you a sick person, Mr. Somerhaus? Do you enjoy the suffering of others?"

He smiled. "That's quite an accusation."

"It's an assessment."

He laughed. "No, Max, I wouldn't say that at all. You see, if someone trips over that step, they land in either a snowbank or a bush. They aren't often hurt, and…" he paused here with a sheepish smile, "…well, my days can get monotonous, and when it happens it's really quite funny to witness."

"You have a rather perverse sense of humor."

P. Martin Somerhaus gave a serene half-moon smile. "Yes."

Mordecai glanced towards the door. He paused, recalling something. "At an office where I used to work there was a nail in the doorjamb. I suspect something hung there before I used the room, but it was at just the right height to knock the hat off anyone who came in too fast without knocking. That could be amusing. It used to take Viktor's hat clean off all the time."

"Viktor?"

Mordecai's eyes widened. He hadn't realized what he was saying. "An - um. An associate of mine. Former associate."

"What line of work are you in?"

"I'm an accountant."

His face brightened. "Oh you are? How fortuitous, I'm in the market for one! Do you have a card?"

"I'm afraid I'm not taking new clients at the moment."

He nodded. "Ah. Well if a space opens up do let me know."

"I'll be sure to do that. Good day." Mordecai put on his hat and left.

He decided to kill two hours reading the paper at the cafe where the little waitress was still terrified of him. It was to the point that he nearly considered apologizing to her just to make her fear of him a bit less conspicuous, but so long as he was coldly polite and didn't make any sudden moves he found his tea and snickerdoodle - a confection he'd gained an appreciation for, silly name be damned- arrived before everyone else's orders no matter how long they'd been waiting. If her fear of him motivated that level of service he had no real reason to put her at ease. P. Martin Somehaus, however, did not require that sort of cajoling, and Mordecai appreciated that. But when he came back to pick up the letter P. Martin Somerhaus handed it to him with a wink, and he didn't like that at all.

Mordecai opened the translation as he walked down the street.

_Max -_

_In St. Louis there is a beautiful prince who thinks I'm lovely and wants to kiss me? I must return there!_

He was surprised to find himself suddenly no longer walking and in pain. He'd run into a mailbox but this seemed inconsequential somehow so he merely went around it and kept on his way. He wanted to jump up and down for some reason, but he kept moving.

_But I don't know when that will be._

And now he wanted to lay down on the ground, but he kept reading.

_I wanted to tell you something. Dimitri's nose never set right. Now things are better between us because I smile when I see him. It's just not for the reason he thinks. Thank you for that._

"Anytime," he said beneath his breath, smirking.

_So you say I must keep my account with Satan full? How do you know the balance hasn't been paid off already? I may have sent him whole countries' worth of customers! But I do not curse them anymore because when I was younger I had an arrogance. I did things that weren't needed. Things for show. But also you asked if my experience differs? It did once. All I will say now._

Hm. She'd seen something that led her to believe there was an afterlife? Well that was sure to be an interesting story. Probably nonsense, as most such superstitions were, but interesting nonsense.

_I am not sure what this means when you say you have never wanted to kiss anyone before? I am misinterpreting. I don't know what this means. Is this American slang maybe? Americans have strange slang and ways of putting things. I am sorry._

He stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. Someone bumped into him and apologized but he didn't respond, reading the paragraph over. He knew he was odd, he knew it was strange, but apparently the thought that he'd never wanted to kiss anyone before was so inconceivable to her that she assumed he was merely using a colloquialism for something else. She was even apologetic about not understanding said colloquialism. A sick feeling slumped down into his core, like an oily inside-out umbrella sliding down his windpipe.

_I had to look in a book to understand your are B vitamins, yes_

_-_ and here she drew a smiley face -

_though it is getting worse and soon the doctor will have to put me on what are called B Complex vitamins. These are made from more complicated boats, I think?_

He tilted his head. What? No, that was a joke. She didn't actually think vitamins were made of boats but she would probably think there was something horribly wrong with him if she knew what he'd said was in no way a colloquialism. If she knew that, at his relatively advanced age, he had never done this before.  _Well_ , he thought,  _Mitzi's prescience strikes again_. Just as she had quietly warned him once or twice, his total avoidance of this area of life had finally become a problem. The oily umbrella in his center began to slowly turn.

He didn't know why he was the way he was. He just  _was_  the way he was. Once after some social encounter left him feeling confused and ignorant he tried to pinpoint when, exactly, he lost interest in the sexual side of life. He realized he couldn't pinpoint a time he  _had_ an interest in the sexual side of life. Something was supposed to happen in puberty to make women something he wanted to be close to or - or around - or- or on top of- the point was there was supposed to be something desirable for him in the mating arrangement, something desirable in being close to other people and touching them and having them touch him. That pubescent thing never happened for him. He didn't understand the appeal of it all. Couldn't. Being touched was the last thing he ever wanted. The only person who had ever been able to touch him without making him nervous or angry was his mother, and to a lesser extent his sisters, but only when they were small. But he had no interest in touching or petting or slobbering all over another individual. It wasn't for him and that suited him fine! It was everyone else who seemed so fascinated by his distaste, as though it were on par with saying he never consumed liquid water or didn't breathe air.

It wasn't that he wasn't curious or hadn't tried. He genuinely wasn't interested. He knew this beyond a shadow of a doubt since the age of eighteen. His sister Esther, too intelligent not to dabble in some light delinquency, used to invite her little horde of extremely loud friends over whenever their mother and Rose went upstate to visit their elderly aunt. These friends usually smuggled in bottles of whatever they could find and proceeded fill the night with music and drunken shrieks and laughter. He would usually shut himself in his room and read angrily, knowing he had work to do but unable to concentrate with all the noise. He was doing exactly this one night when his door opened and one of Esther's guests slipped into his room.

He scowled up from his book. "The washroom is down the hall," he said.

She giggled. She had masses of curly red hair and green eyes. "I weren't lookin' fer it," she said. Her voice had a pleasant Irish lilt to it. She stepped inside and shut the door behind her.

He began to get annoyed. "Well can I help you with someth-?" but in one smooth motion she knelt on the bed and kissed him. It wasn't just a kiss, either, she put her full weight into it and toppled him over onto his back. Suddenly she was straddling him and her hands and lips were all over him and he was too stunned by any of it to react. He knew he had to react at some point, otherwise this girl would … would what?

What would she do? What happened next?

It was then curiosity got the better of him. Maybe this was it. Maybe it would happen. Maybe if he just let her do whatever it was she was trying to do he would understand what the men at his work were always on about, would feel whatever everyone else seemed to feel. All he had to do was lie there and …let her.

And he tried.

He really did. He did an admirable job of holding the anxiety at bay even though she smelled like cheap wine and her red curls were in his face and he could smell the soap and sweat in her clothes. But when she kissed him and he tasted her sour tongue he finally pushed her off him and shoved her bodily out of his room. She looked up at him in shock and he shut the door right as Esther erupted into high-pitched laughter, quickly followed by her friends.

The lock on his door didn't work so he went to push his desk against it, wincing and obsessively wiping his mouth, but to his puzzlement found walking difficult due to a condition that usually only afflicted him in the morning. He didn't understand why that was there when he felt nothing but revulsion the whole time. This confused him, and this confusion tipped over into anger, but it was useless anger he could do nothing with but seethe. It built and built until later that night after her guests left he and Esther got into a screaming argument so loud that their neighbors threatened to call the police. She'd slapped him twice. By the second time it was everything he could do not to hit her back. He knew that if he did it would be a fist and he would break something so he turned and stalked out of the apartment and did not return till later that afternoon when his mother and Rose were back. Mordecai and Esther barely spoke for months afterward, and had just begun speaking again when he found himself on a swift train out of New York.

He took the elevator back up to his apartment, too drained to take the stairs. He kicked the door shut, locked all the locks, and sat in his armchair in a cold misery, finishing her letter.

_You make French toast? I had to ask what this is but here we call it grenki. I am awful at cooking grenki. Really I am awful at cooking anything but a pig. My father said I was only half a woman for it. Send me your recipe and perhaps I will be less awful._

_You like the perfume on the letter? I will put it anywhere you want, beautiful prince._

_-Julita_

_PS - When I went to get vitamins I asked the doctor and he said it is impossible to die of long hair._

"Is that so!?" Mordecai snapped aloud. "Well, you know what, Innochka? I'll just - I just - you're just -  _bah!"_  he said, slumped in his seat, and sighed.

**000**

_Julita -_

_Why did you shoot Orlov?_

He wanted to begin, but of course he could not. He did, however, have newspaper clippings reporting Natasha Orlov's death, which he would slip into the envelope before he mailed it.

_Julita -_

_Any insight into the included articles would be appreciated. We are all scratching our heads stateside_

He paused.

_where there is indeed a gentleman - perhaps a prince -_

He held his breath.

_who continues to want to kiss you._

He cleared his throat and kept writing.

_I'm glad to hear Dimitri's nose has healed. If you need it broken again I can do that for you._

_You've sent the devil several countries worth of souls? Yourself? No, but I've no doubt you had a part in it. I take it that can't extrapolated upon here. That said I am very curious as to the 'differing experience' you mentioned. If you can tell that story please do, I would like to hear it._

_As for grenki - which is an entirely charming name - if anything will make you a whole woman it is this French toast recipe. Now I do not give this out lightly, Julita. I am trusting you with a recipe into which I put considerable research and development over a period of years. This was not handed down to me from my mother or grandmother, it is entirely of my own invention. Every ingredient, temperature, and time has been adjusted to perfection. This grenki is, without question, the best grenki you or anyone you know or anyone they know will ever eat. If you don't believe me allow me to relate a relevant anecdote:_

_Before my current employment with the hotel I worked for a small cafe, which was usually empty for reasons you understand. It served more as a kitchen for the staff than anything else, though it did have a full time cook, a small menu, and was open to the public. I rarely if ever ate there because the cook was a bit of an ape and I wasn't enthusiastic about eating anything he'd touched, but I was in a situation that if I did not eat right then I wouldn't for hours and I was already famished. I do not work well hungry, my target accuracy drops about 4.5% every half hour after I become aware that I need food. In any case I sat in the cafe and ordered French toast, putting myself at the mercy of the ape, and oh the disgrace he served me, the utter disgrace of it, Innochka. Do you remember the fish we were served in the train? That, only undercooked unseasoned eggy sloppy breadslop. I never paid for anything there but I wanted my money back. So! I needed food, I needed it quickly, and I needed it to be edible, so I took it upon myself to hop on the stove and show Chef Ape how it was done. I used this recipe - I didn't guard it as closely at the time - he thanked me, I ate and went on my way, situation resolved. Yes?_

_No! The situation continues!_

_You see, as I said, I didn't spend a lot of time in the cafe proper, and as such did not notice the ever steadier trickle of civilians coming in for breakfast. I only became aware of it when I was balancing the cafe's books - that's another thing I am very good at, by the way, if you ever need any books balanced I can do that for you - and I saw a marked uptick in the legitimate income the cafe earned. Imagine my surprise when I find out that not only has Chef Ape added my grenki to the menu, my grenki somehow caught the eye of a famous food reviewer who stumbled up to the cafe after a night at the other establishment below. Are you aware that a drunk person, if offered French toast, will pay for French toast approximately 100% of the time? We at the cafe knew this and sometimes opened late at night expressly for this purpose. The food reviewer later returned when sober to make a proper assessment, and pronounced MY grenki the best grenki in St. Louis. "Somehow, the most 'unassuming' cafe in the city has managed to produce something that has redefined my conception of breakfast." That's a quote, Innochka. That is a direct quote._

_Do you find that impressive? Well get ahold of yourself, it gets better. See, because then came the hordes. People starting lining up for this French toast at six am. It was a spectacle. I would come to balance books early just to watch them wait! Just as I began to seriously consider that I may have missed my calling as a chef, my employer informed me that my French toast would be taken off the menu, as it was attracting too much attention to the other establishment. Oh, I fought for it, believe me, but in the end he was of course correct. He was a very wise man. I was nevertheless griefstricken and inconsolable, as was Chef Ape, who was actually named Stephen and was not as offensive as I'd assumed when I first met him. He did the dish justice even if his personal grooming choices were not always choices I would endorse. However one day he came to me with a choice I did endorse, and that choice was to take my unused grenki recipe to a grenki competition in Kansas City._

_Grand prize. Grand prize, Innochka. Not even first. Grand prize and crowned the best French toast in the region. I have the ribbon and certificate on the wall in my kitchen, as Stephen was gracious enough to give them to me. This is the recipe I am sending you. It is no small thing. You are now excellent at cooking pork and French toast. Don't tell anyone how._

_You'll put the perfume anywhere I like? The letters should suffice for the time being, thank you._

_-Max_

_PS: It is indeed very possible to die of long hair if one is grabbed by it and dragged off somewhere by some brute. The "cause of death" field on the certificate would certainly read "long hair." This doctor of yours is a quack. Please cut it. There are many short styles I'm sure would flatter you._

He read back over the letter. He had not addressed the issue of the colloquialism. And, he decided as he folded the letter and slid it inside an addressed envelope, he would not.

**000**

Her reply came when the weather took a turn for spring.

_Max -_

_My goodness! Such grenki, Max! How amazing you are! That was quite a story! I tried to make it and it turned out terrible, I burned everything, I am a terrible cook. It is simple, all I have to do is follow directions, but I cannot follow directions from a book. All cooking is from books. If I watched you I would learn it better. I promise to keep your grenki secret. Once I have it memorized I will eat the recipe. And I will make the custard for it the night before as you said that is important._

_About the newspaper articles you sent me, there is not much I can say. We are puzzled too. I have ideas but I cannot say them here. But I will tell you the story you wanted. Like you I never believed in those things. I think I still don't. I don't know, you see this story still confuses me. I have been with a lot of people at the time of death, as you know. One spoke to me as he went. He took my hand. He did not care why I was there - he thought I was there for one thing and had just found out I was there for another, you understand - but he took my hand and spoke to me. And now as I write I realize I cannot tell the rest of this story here at all. It will have to wait for someday. But the curses - this person is why I don't anymore. This person and what he said to me as he died. There have been times in my life I felt very very lowly and that was the worst one. I have not told anyone this. I haven't told anyone this but you and I cannot tell it to you! It is unfair! I wish you were here, beautiful prince. There is a very silly woman in Buenos Ares who thinks you are wonderful and wants to kiss you. I would kiss you all the time if you were here, I would have to. I am sorry. I am very silly. Please don't tell anyone I am silly, I am supposed to be very scary._

And here she drew a happy face with little fangs.

_It is almost spring where you are. It is getting cold where I am. I think of when you and I went on the boat and I smile. Ah, this is terrible Max, I smile all the time now. I smile when I think of boats and I smile at Dimitri's nose. I didn't smile before. Everyone here thinks I've lost my mind._

_-Julita_

_PS: Oh my Max, you are imagining me being dragged off by my hair by a big strong man? You like thinking of this? Then what happens to me, Max? What terrible awful things does the big strong man do once his hands are on me?_

-and here another fanged happy face, this time with a tongue sticking out, big eyelashes and a long looping braid. When P. Martin Somerhaus handed him the translation he did so with a big smile, and that smile quickened Mordecai's heart. What had she said?

"It's getting warmer out, Max," P. Martin Somerhaus said, chuckling. "Spring has sprung."

"Yes, very astute of you!" Mordecai replied, gesturing out the window at the beautiful sunny day. He put on his hat and left.

**000**

_Julita-_

_You burned it? That's not the worst mistake. There may have been a problem with the element on the stove you were using. Try again._

_I appreciate your thoroughness in keeping the recipe secret, but I don't require you actually eat the paper it is written on. However if you do choose to do this I would recommend shredding or cutting the paper into very small bits and mixing it with the custard, then cooking that in a scramble -surely you can scramble eggs. This will leave you with a custard / paper matrix that, while I cannot promise palatability, should be at the very least somewhat edible. Or, you could just cook it in said fashion and throw it away, anyone who wants the recipe so badly that they would reconstruct the paper out of that slop can have it. Either way it is indeed vital that you make the custard the night before._

_Thank you for what little insight you were able to offer on the articles, and for what little of your story you were able to tell me. I would very much like to know what that man said to you. This is a frustrating state of affairs, I agree. It is spring here and it is getting cold where you are and I suppose this is the best that can be done when two people are communicating across languages and hemispheres. I'd rather not have a third party privy to my letters from silly women in Buenos Ares but I would also like to read them. It is worse for me, the translator is odd and impertinent and has unusual facial hair. Who is translating on your end, by the way?_

_It would be pleasant were I there or you here. And not just because you seem to feel you would spend a lot of that time kissing me, which wouldn't be so bad. I might like that. But you can't tell anyone. I won't tell anyone you are silly if you won't tell anyone I might like that. We are both supposed to be very scary and what we have here is not frightening anyone. It's bad for business. To wit I would say I am glad I seem to be the source of your newfound smiling but I am not sure if I should be._

_-Max_

_PS: No I DON'T like thinking about you being dragged off by your hair, Innochka, that's the point. I'm not sure why you're asking what happens, I'm sure you can fill in the blanks. Frankly I don't understand why those blanks don't terrify you, they terrify me and I'll never be subject to them. Please cut it. It's a terrible risk with very little benefit to your looks. You don't even need hair._

And here he drew a frowning face with angry eyebrows, just to drive the point home.

**000**

"I can promise you my friend here will have no moral compunction about what he'll be instructed to inflict upon you should you fail to hold up your end of this arrangement," Asa Sweet said to some shmuck. Mordecai stood to side of Asa's office chair, the perch from which he usually intimidated shmucks. "How's the weather up there, Mr. Heller?"

"Not a cloud in the sky, Mr. Sweet," he said. He took a note from P. Martin Somerhaus and gave the man a serene half-moon smile. The shmuck's eyes went wide and his face went pale. He swallowed. Oh, that was  _effective_. He'd have to use that again.

"Will there be anything else?" Mordecai asked Asa once their guest was shown the door.

"Did you  _smile_  at him?"

He nodded. "Yes. A little experiment."

"I'd say it was a success. That was terrifying."

Mordecai aimed the half-moon smile at Asa. "Good."

Asa shuddered. "Yikes. And no, nothing else besides what we already covered. You're free to go."

Mordecai nodded and left. He had a new blues record, a beautiful petit fillet at home waiting to be cooked in butter and garlic, and sweet golden missive in his coat pocket. After a brief stop at the translator's he was looking forward to the kind of evening that made life worth all the garbage, but to his surprise P. Martin Somerhaus met him at the door to the office, blocking his way.

"We're closed," he said. His voice was dry and hollow.

Mordecai glanced at the sign. "It says you're open."

"No, we're - " he took the sign and flipped it. "We're closed. Closed now. Apologies."

"I - " Mordecai looked up at him in confusion. The man's eyes were wide and shaky and wet. Perhaps he was ill? Got some bad news? Mordecai's heart sank. He really wanted to read that letter that night. "Are you certain you couldn't just - quickly- ? I don't think it's long and I'll make it worth your while."

"No. No no," the translator said quickly. "We're closed. Goodnight." He shut the door and drew the curtain over the window.

Mordecai stood there a moment, taken aback. How strange. He turned, avoided the broken step, and made off down the street, disappointed. But then he'd almost made the mistake  _again_  of taking the letter to Mr. Somerhaus before opening it at home! He could settle for a consolation prize, he supposed. And at least now he had time to stop at the spice shop and pick up a new bottle of vanilla beans. He'd been putting them in just about everything. And he could also -

He saw something in the window of the gift shop Mr. Somerhaus mentioned as he passed it. He stopped and backtracked to take another look.

"My god," Mordecai said.

Displayed in the window was a print of a hand-drawn riverboat schematic. It showed the entire vessel along with cross sections and technical drawings of individual parts, all neatly marked on a legend to the side. Along the edges were old fashioned floral filigrees, and the entirety of it was as beautifully composed as a piece of gallery art. It was exquisite and clearly Innochka's. He stepped into the shop and approached the counter without even looking at the price. Could he mail her something so large as a tube?

"Hello," he said to the lady behind the counter. "I'd like-"

His eyes settled on the wall behind her. Hanging on the wall were racks of regional newspapers, one of which was  _The Orleaner_. The first headline read:

**CHARGES BROUGHT IN NATASHA ORLOV MURDER**

Private Chef Charged With Murder in the First Degree

And below that, another headline:

**THE CHEF'S ALIBI REVEALED:**

Are Max & Julita Real, Or Just Figments of Deranged Mind?

Mordecai's mouth went dry. He suddenly realized what he'd seen in P. Martin Somerhaus's eyes a few moments before.

Fear.

**000**


	18. the Galapagos

"Are you all right, sir?" the lady behind the counter asked. She followed his gaze to the newspapers. "Oh, I know, isn't it awful?" she asked. "That poor girl."

"Indeed," Mordecai said, his throat dry.

He hand rose to her chest. "Oh well bless your dear heart, all choked up," she said softly. "I know, the world can be a terrible place." She patted his forearm.

He jerked away at her touch. "Madam!"

She jumped.

"Give me a copy of  _The Orleaner!"_  he snapped.

"Right away, I'm so sorry," she said, averting her eyes. She handed him the paper and he paid, then went to the doorway and paused to peek around it. Three doors down P. Martin Somerhaus hurriedly locked his shop and set off down the street, glancing around like a man pursued. The moment Mordecai Heller stepped from the doorway to the sidewalk, he was.

**000**

Even in broad daylight civilians were always easy to follow without being seen and P. Martin Somerhaus was no exception. Mordecai had time to take cursory glances at the paper and was able to glean the relevant information. The cook - the  _cook! -_  how could Mordecai have been so  _careless_ and  _sentimental_  about what was, according to the article, little more than a recent culinary school graduate on a good night? Who only worked there under the good will of Mr. Orlov, whose daughter he was courting? And now, having been arrested on little more evidence than his being the sole survivor of the entire affair, was singing a loud and long song about Max and Julita Goldwine, whose bodies were never recovered and whose faces he hadn't seen, but whose names he'd been given along with the night's menu? The cook did not have a very compelling case against these two phantoms and the newspaper treated his alibi with a dark, winking mirth - oh what a dashing story it was, this heist-pulling Bonnie and Clyde, "probably" there to steal hundreds of thousands in already stolen goods -  _no evidence of which_ was found on the premises.

Mordecai raised his eyebrows. The Russians cleaned Orlov out entirely? They did have a penchant for looting, and he supposed there was no point in leaving such riches for the NOPD to let squander in evidence for decades. It was sensible to take advantage of such a windfall. After all, it meant more money for Innochka to buy vanilla perfume and things with pythons on them.

In any case going after the cook now wasn't an option, as he was sitting pretty in police custody, and his shaky story about Max and Julita was not enough of a threat to risk an attempt. The real threat was two blocks ahead of him and starting to feel a bit more at ease, meaning he was likely near his home. Mordecai watched as Mr. Somerhaus turned sharply to the right and walked up the path to a small triplex. Mordecai sped up his pace and saw him enter the door on the farthest right, number three seventy five. He stole around the back of the house, located the phone line for unit three seventy five, and cut it.

**000**

It was easy enough to slip into through an unlocked kitchen window while Mr. Somerhaus was still in the living room, wide-eyed and unsure what to do with himself. The kitchen was dark and had the barren look of a bachelor's inhabitance, which was good. No wife or children in the home simplified matters. Mordecai sat quietly at the kitchen table and watched Mr. Somerhaus walk back and forth before the entry to the living room, the sliver of which Mordecai could see was covered in maps and photographs of his travels. He paused before a desk, his back to the door, and Mordecai heard the sound of a phone lifting off the receiver. And now there would be a pause, and he would hit the prongs of the phone a few times, and then a gasp as it dawned on him that his phone didn't work and what that may mean, and then he would begin to panic. He would wonder, should he leave right away? Max could be outside waiting. Should he stay in the house? Max might come there and find him. And then he'd consider the horrifying possibility that Max might be in the house  _right now_  - but no, surely not, and to reassure himself and he would gingerly turn to the nearest doorway, and, right on schedule:

"Oh dear god!" P. Martin Somerhaus cried out when he saw Mordecai sitting calmly at his kitchen table. He stumbled backwards into the living room and tipped over a floor lamp. He clumsily grabbed it to use as a weapon. "Stay- stay back!" he ordered, jabbing it at the intruder shade first.

Mordecai rose from the table and opened his palms towards Mr. Somerhaus. "No need. I'm just here to talk," he said with a well-practiced reassuring affability.

"You can talk from over there," Mr. Somerhaus said, keeping the lamp level between them.

"Certainly," Mordecai replied, but took a few leisurely steps into the living room regardless. He had a long, lingering look at the lifetime of travel it displayed. Framed above the translator's head was a diploma bearing his full name. "Seems you've been just about everywhere, Penn."

"What do you want?" the translator asked, voice dry with fear.

"Just to talk."

"I don't believe that."

"And I don't blame you. But please, Mr. Somerhaus, you can put the lamp down. I have two holstered forty fives under this coat and very precise aim. If I wanted you dead you would be."

Mr. Somerhaus's eyes widened but he did not release the lamp. "So - so it's true? You two killed that little girl in New Orleans?"

"Her? No. No, we had nothing to do with her. We're as stumped as anyone else about that."

His eyes widened further. "But - you- " Mr. Somerhaus blinked. "The father. The art dealer."

"Very good, Detective Somerhaus." Mordecai turned towards a framed photo on the wall in which Mr. Somerhaus posed with his arm around a demure, pixie-ish woman with heavy eye makeup.

"Six -  _four_  people. That was four people," Mr. Somerhaus said, his voice hushed. "You - you  _killed four people._ "

"I believe my current tally is somewhere between one forty five and one sixty two," Mordecai said. "Is that you and Clara Bow?"

Mr. Somerhaus's jaw sagged but he didn't reply.

Mordecai moved on to the next picture, clasping his hands behind his back. "Pompeii! So they really  _are_  just frozen in place by ash. I didn't realize it was that literal. And the Hagia Sophia! Remarkable. It must have been quite thrilling to see it up close. I've read that at the right time of day it looks like the topmost dome is suspended on a ring of light, is that true?""

Mordecai glanced at Mr. Somerhaus, who had let the lamp sag. The translator blinked, then seemed to gather himself. He lifted the lamp once more. "What do you want?" he demanded. "Why are you in my house?"

"I just have some questions about how you run your business," Mordecai replied.

"You could have knocked on the front door for that."

Mordecai gave Mr. Somerhaus his own half-moon smile.

"No," Mr. Somerhaus said. "No, I suppose not."

"A sharp man. Have you given any more thought to putting that lamp down?"

He glanced at Mordecai's chest. "You have two forty fives, what's a lamp to you?"

"My point exactly."

Mr. Somerhaus swallowed. His eyes darted from Mordecai to the lamp and back again.

"I  _promise_  I am just here to talk, Mr. Somerhaus. Now I have far more efficient methods of extracting information at my disposal, but you are a reasonable and civilized man. I would prefer to keep this conversation as reasonable and civilized as you are, however that lamp is  _irritating_  me - " he said in a tone that made Mr. Somerhaus flinch, "and you are far too well-mannered to  _purposely irritate_ a guest."

Mr. Somerhaus hesitated, then slowly lowered the lamp but did not look happy about it. He jerked his head at a seat before his desk. "Then -then sit. Sit," he stammered. "Sit down, and - and keep your hands where I can see them."

"A fan of detective novels, are you?" Mordecai said, and sat with his hands where Mr. Somerhaus could see them.

**000**

"How - how does one get into that line of work?" Mr. Somerhaus blurted once they were both seated.

Mordecai raised his eyebrows. "Sorry?"

"The uh - the uh - your … profession."

"Accountancy? You go to school. And yourself?" Mordecai said. "How does one get to be a part time nosy translator, part time world traveler?" Mordecai scanned the wall behind Mr. Somerhaus, covered in photographs. The dunes of the Sahara, Ayers Rock in Australia, unspecified Swiss lochs, stunningly symmetrical Aztec ruins, a stage full of glittering bellydancers, members of a naked African tribe staring steely-eyed at the camera. More often than not the pictures featured Mr. Somerhaus himself, sometimes with a guest or ten, but always with a curious expression it took a good firm minute for Mordecai to place. It was happiness, but a beaming and deep sort he encountered so rarely that it seemed just as exotic as the far-off locales themselves.

"I'm sure it's a lot more straightforward than becoming a .. a  _button man,"_ Mr. Somerhaus said.

"I told you, I'm an accountant."

Mr. Somerhaus's eyes darted, and after a moment he leaned in slightly. "Is…is that a  _c_ ode name for what you do?" he asked, intrigued. "Is that what they…you know …  _call it_?"

"No."

"No," Mr. Somerhaus repeated softly. "You'll have to excuse me, I've never talked to someone like you before."

"How do you know?"

The translator's eyes widened.

Mordecai continued to scan the crowded walls. "How  _did_  you end up traveling so widely?"

"I- " he stammered, put on the spot by Mordecai's genuine question. "Well, I - I love it. I live for it. After the war I decided that my life would be about what brings me joy, and since then I've lived with no regrets."

Mordecai considered this. "Interesting."

He paused. "You'll excuse me if I hope you don't have a similar philosophy."

"I can see why you would hope that, and I can't say that I do," Mordecai replied. "The thought never occurred to me."

"That's reassuring. But what about, uh …your Miss Julita?"

Mordecai straightened. "What about her?"

"She's a … an  _accountant_ as well, is she not? Is she - or does she - find  _joy_ in accounting?"

Mordecai, affronted, was about to tell Mr. Somerhaus to mind his own business, but the question gave him pause. "I …don't know. I don't believe so." He paused. "What makes you think that?"

"Some - some of the things she said - when recalled in the present light- "

"Ah. I often worried she was perhaps too candid," Mordecai said. "But you don't seem the suspicious type."

"No. Perhaps I should be. But I - I don't assume my clients are… " he gestured at Mordecai.  _Like you_. "Well, that they aren't just speaking in a kind of private code. People who love one another often invent their own language. I assumed when she spoke of curses and sending people to hell it was just …" he made a helpless gesture, "just terms I didn't understand for things that weren't my business."

" _About_  your business," Mordecai said. "Do you keep copies of or notes about the documents you translate?"

"There's a file of transactions but I keep no notes nor copies, no."

"Have you told anyone about us? Even in passing?"

P. Martin Somerhaus shook his head. "No. I don't do that. Everything is completely confidential."

"That's good, but I feel I must say your bedside manner, as it were, needs some work," Mordecai said. "I have  _never in my life_  had a door shut in my face by anyone in a service industry. Appalling, Mr. Somerhaus, truly. I'm not sure how you expect to keep any clientele with such an abysmal philosophy of client relations."

The translator's eyes widened. "I - " he began, then hesitated. "There were … some … extenuating circumstances."

"Excuses excuses. Now are you  _sure_  you haven't told anyone?"

"Yes."

"Not even Janice?"

"Janice?" he replied. "Janice just cleans. She doesn't know - I don't tell her anything. Look, Max, I - I haven't told anyone, and I won't. I treat our arrangement with the same gravity as attorney / client privilege. I haven't told anyone - and - and I  _won't_  - I -I swear I won't," he said, his breath quickening as he remembered to be afraid of what sat across from him. "You can have it in writing, Max. I can write up a legal document, have it - have it notarized - I'd be in breach of contract if-"

Mordecai held up his hand. "No need to trouble yourself, Mr. Somerhaus. I believe you."

"You - " he stammered. "You do?"

"Absolutely," Mordecai said, and stood. Mr. Somerhaus flinched, but Mordecai made what he knew was a reassuring gesture. "You've shown yourself to be a man of integrity despite your lackluster customer relations and broken front step."

"I'll - I'll have it fixed first thing in the morning."

"Appreciated." Mordecai took one last look around the room. His gaze kept falling on the man's face beaming beatifically on every continent, of the evidence of a life lived purely for joy. But now here that same face was before Mordecai, helpless and terrified. So what did that joyous life  _really_ earn him in the end?

Mordecai put on his hat. The translator rose but Mordecai held up his hand. "No need, I can see myself out as well as in. One last question."

"Yes?" the translator asked tightly.

"Where do you plan to go next?"

"Oh," P. Martin Somherhaus said, relief evident in his voice. "I - well - I - I've always wanted to visit the Galapagos Islands," he said, and gestured to a map of said islands on the far wall, complete with a beautifully rendered sketch of the HMS Beagle. "But they're so very remote, and- and I'm not as young as I used to be."

Mordecai nodded. "I'm sure you'll get there, Mr. Somerhaus."

"Thank you, Max. I - I hope so."

"I'll be coming by to check on that step tomorrow afternoon."

The translator smiled. It didn't touch his eyes. "Yes. I'll - I'll look forward to it."

"Good day," Mordecai said, located the front door, and walked out. Pulling his hat down and tilting his head to obscure his eyes he made his way quickly down the road beneath the streetlights until he was out of Mr. Somerhaus's sight.

And then, he doubled back.

He found the kind of quiet unseen nook just the right distance away that he was so well practiced in finding, one that allowed him a perfect view into Mr. Somerhaus's living room window, and of Mr. Somerhaus himself in the gap between the curtains. He hadn't moved from the desk. He merely sat there with his head in his hands in what Mordecai knew was the shock and relief of realizing you were alive when you had every reason not to be.

Mordecai watched and waited. He waited for Mr. Somerhaus to look up from his hands to the map of the Galapagos Islands. He waited a moment longer than he had to for the traveler's eyes to settle on it, for his shoulders to go loose at the thought of it, before sliding his forty five from the holster and lining up the shot.

**000**


	19. boat rides on the starry river

"Have you seen the goddam papers from News Orleans!?" Asa Sweet shouted into the phone. It was two in the afternoon and Mordecai was fast asleep when he called. It was a deep sleep, restorative, and being ripped away from it left him slightly nauseated. He'd had to wrestle his way out of the knotted bedcovers to pick up the phone and he'd knocked the receiver to the ground first.

"What?" he barked, voice strained from hanging over the side of the bed. It was a tall bed, high off the floor with impeccably arranged storage bins beneath it. The height of it, and the size - huge -gave Mordecai a pleasing sense of regality. The bed was twice the size of his childhood bedroom.

"The  _papers_!"

"It's nothing to worry about."

" _It's nothing to worry about?_  Orlov's goddam cook is fingering the two of you - how is it nothing to-? Look, just get down here, this isn't a phone conversation."

"Fine. I'll be there in forty five minutes," Mordecai grumbled.

"Forty five  _minutes_? What, gotta curl your hair?"

Mordecai rolled his eyes. "Yes, that's it exactly, Asa," he said and hung up the phone.

**000**

"This isn't so urgent that you needed to wake me from a dead sleep," Mordecai said, scowling.

"It was two pm, beatnik. How is this anything but urgent?"

"Have you read the article? The chef has nothing but his word and the NOPD clearly wants to hang the entire affair on him - not just the daughter, all of it. The chef hasn't a shred of evidence against us - he didn't even see our faces. As far as the public is concerned we're just a particularly creative alibi."

Asa scanned the article. He frowned. "It's not like you to leave witnesses."

"He didn't  _witness_  anything. He left well before we entered the showroom," Mordecai lied. " Asa, all he has are names on a menu. He's been fingered for murders he didn't commit and is nervous and panicking. If the Julita and Max myth doesn't work for him he'll have another explanation for who it might have been in a week. This may be loud and flashy but it is no risk whatsoever to Marigold."

Asa considered this. "I'm playing with the idea of sending you down there to finish things up properly."

"He's in custody."

"I have faith in you."

"Appreciated, but it would only give his story credence. Right now he has nothing. If he turns up dead in his cell it might give the NOPD cause to start seriously investigating the claim. As it stands now, who knows who Max and Julita were? Who knows  _if_ they were?" Mordecai shook his head. "You could send me back down to New Orleans but it would be a waste of resources and would only exacerbate things. I have work to attend to here."

Asa went quiet for a few long moments. He folded the newspaper and slapped it on his desk with a sigh. "This wouldn't even be a concern if the Russians knew their asses from their elbows. If you'd known Orlov was to be eliminated you could have planned this a bit better. I don't understand it. How can  _that_ be an international arms outfit? We're just some two bit speakeasy but we seem one hell of a lot more organized then they are."

"I've wondered myself. Their behavior was largely baffling."

"Have you asked her why she shot the guy?"

"I'm sorry?" Mordecai asked.

"You're writing her, right?"

Mordecai's eyes widened. "How did you - "

"She wrote you, I don't see any reason you wouldn't write back. I assume you two have been communicating regularly?"

"Well - yes. We have," Mordecai said slowly. The sudden exposure unsettled him but he collected himself and moved on. "But for obvious reasons that's not something I would ask in a letter."

Asa nodded. "I suppose not. But any insight you have would be useful. She didn't seem too happy with them either from what I remember."

"She wasn't. It can be very trying when you are dragging an organization kicking and screaming behind the truck of your own professionalism. So to speak." He paused. "She did tell me that they don't take her seriously because she's female, but that seemed suspect to me at the time.  _And still does,_ " he said, lifting his chin. "Because I don't find her  _above questioning_."

"Don't worry kid, you still might one day," Asa said, chuckling.

Mordecai blinked. "What?" he asked. "Didn't you caution me  _against_  finding her above questioning?"

"No - well  _yes_ , but -"

"And now you hope I  _do_  find her above questioning?"

"I'm -"

Mordecai lifted his pince-nez to rub his eyes. "Did the context change between now and then? Did it somehow change without my being aware? I've never understood how context can suddenly change within a conversation between just two people. Don't you need - I don't know - my  _consent_ to change the meaning of our entire discussion? I am half of this conversation, after all, you're being astonishingly inconsiderate. Changing the meaning of something based on mere nuance would be absolutely unacceptable in anything published by any worthwhile scientific journal, yet we accept this in conversation all the time. Why? Why is that, Asa? Why do we as a society play so fast and loose with our modes of self-expression? You know I doubt it's just me. I imagine this causes a lot of problems. I bet this annoying little quirk of communication causes untold wreckage in all walks of life. I bet that wreckage is even  _quantifiable."_

Asa looked wide-eyed at Mordecai.

"What?" Mordecai said. "You don't think it's quantifiable? I bet it is. I bet one could measure the effect of changes of conversational context on the gross national product if there was a reliable way to collect the data. You disagree?"

Asa stroked his chin. "Atlas told me about this.

"Atlas - Atlas told you what?"

"About your nonsensical rants."

"Nonsensical!?" Mordecai said. "Atlas found my rants perfectly  _sensical_. I'll have you know everything I just said made far more sense than your sudden and inexplicable waffling on the issue of finding women above questioning. Don't try to gaslight me, Mr. Sweet. I have you dead to rights."

Asa nodded indulgently. "Yes, you certainly do."

Mordecai jabbed his index finger at Asa. "Now you're just being patronizing. You don't actually care about quantifying anything, do you? I swear you're as big a mental  _poseur_ as Viktor. Now if we're done here I'd like to cleanse my palate of this … this intellectual  _fart_  of a conversation before it ruins my day."

Sweet nodded slowly, eyeing Mordecai. "You, uh…you're free to go."

"Thank you," Mordecai huffed. He left the door open when he exited specifically so he could shout "It's  _quantifiable!_ " down the hall just when Asa started to feel safe.

**000**

Absent one Penn Martin Somerhaus, Mordecai faced a serious problem: he had a precious gold envelope but no way to read the contents. No way within fifty miles, in any case. He deemed the university's linguistics department too shaky a proposition for him to feel comfortable with - too many indistinct lines there. At least Mr. Somerhaus was a professional. Mordecai gave him money, he performed a service, no awkward social obligations involved. College students might expect him to - what did they call it? - smoke  _gage_  with them or something. That probably wasn't what they called it, which was yet one more reason the hire-a-student endeavor was dead in the cradle.

No.

No, it was clear what he could have to do.

He wandered away from the Linguistics department with it's  _cool cats_  smoking and lounging on couches. The registrar had a catalog of classes to flip though. There it was: Introduction to Russian Language. Prerequistes: none.

He grumbled.

It was, quite possibly, the very last thing he wanted to do. His difficulty with languages was reason enough, but this particular endeavor seemed to require his going to a class - he tried to learn from books but without anyone to check his work he kept hitting a wall - which meant spending a set amount of time twice a week in a room with a group of strangers. Said strangers who would, inevitably, become familiar with his face. Familiar to the point that they might one day be able to pick him out of a lineup. It was the reason he avoided becoming too much of a regular anywhere. As it had with Mr. Somerhaus, it only seemed to bring trouble.

The first class was not promising. He'd shown up and taken the seat in the farthest back corner, meeting no ones eyes. He took dutiful notes but a gradual sense of doom descended over him as the class went on. He looked at the syllabus, flipped through the text book. Was it for  _children_? Was he in a  _grade school_? At the leisurely pace this class was set he'd barely know more than he did now at the end of twelve weeks, and that simply would not do.

The professor's posted office hours were Tuesdays from two to six. Mordecai arrived at the campus a little earlier than was strictly needed. In all his time in St. Louis his professional attentions never led him there. He liked it. Everywhere he looked were people with books minding their own business.

"Oh, good afternoon. Eli, right? How can I help you?" the professor, a squat middle aged woman with dangling earrings, said as she gestured to a seat.

"Yes. Thank you," he replied, and sat. "I'm finding the pace of your class too slow for my needs."

"Oh," she said, surprised. "I'm sorry to hear that."

"What does one do if one needs to learn how to read a foreign language exceptionally quickly?"

"Ah!" she said. "I see. Well, there are private tutors I know of who offer accelerated courses for businessmen. However it's very costly and very time consuming."

"Could you direct me to them?"

And that was how he came to be under the tutelage, seven days a week, four hours a day, of one Mrs. Vera Babikov. She was a shriveled old witch with her silver hair in an iron bun, a drill sergeant's bedside manner, and a bottomless kettle of tea. She seemed to understand that his time at her doily-encrusted kitchen table was about his learning to read Russian and nothing else. She did not ask his reasons for being there. She did not so much as ask him about his day.

He tipped her very, very well.

**000**

_Max -_

_I decided not to eat the recipe. I will keep it in a safe. I tried it again. It took six tries but I finally managed to make it in a way I think you would approve. It was very good. I had an idea to try it with a croissant. It was also very good. This is why I will be fat time you see me._

_I am wondering, how is my pistol? I hope she is being a good guest. Tell her hello for me. You can give her a hug but make sure she is unloaded first._

_I have a friend translating for me. She is someone in the business and someone I trust with my life. Don't worry._

_Yes the lack of scary is a problem. No one will take me seriously smiling. I must sharpen all my knives and keep all my weapons loaded. If someone sees me smile too much I can fix it very quickly, ha ha! But the problem is I think I like smiling. I like thinking of you and I can't think of you and be sad. Maybe I could be more stern. Think of you very sternly and with a very stern face. You are good at that I think? I bet you are still perfectly scary like I used to be. Tsk tsk tsk Julita is terrible._

_I was speaking with an associate the other day and he told me a remarkable thing. He said one day they will use radio waves to fire guns from space! You could tell the gun to fire in Austria and hit a target in France! This sounds crazy but I trust him, he has a lot of knowledge. Can you imagine? But I have a better idea, I will use this to send kisses to you. I think it is maybe the best way to get them there. They are coming from space!_

_-Julita_

Or at least that's what he thought it said.

He'd been slowly decoding the letter over two weeks, applying what he'd learned from Mrs. Babikov, who seemed to understand exactly what methods would jam a working facility with the Russian language into his brain the fastest. He was surprised how quickly he took to it under her militant guidance. The oddly shaped Cyrillic runes carved themselves spots of meaning in his mind and began shooting spidery webs towards each other, forming words, then sentences. They were very basic but it seemed Innochka's manner of written communication was itself very basic, full of short sentences and repetitive phrases and absent any complicated words. Her concepts were often colorful - such as the orbital kiss gun, which stood as good a chance of killing him as any other gun, only not from a rain of bullets but from - from - from something he could not summon a word for. From pure…whatever it was that concept made him feel, which was curling and antsy but also good. Tickled! Tickled? He knew  _tickled_ , he also knew  _delighted_. He decided it fit somewhere between those two, only with an extra spine of warmth he got whenever she talked about kissing him, which was similar to what he felt when he smelled her perfume.

He took a breath from effort. It could be exhausting filling in the blanks of his periodic table of feelings. New elements with strange atomic weights were coming on the scene these days, slippery and exotic and difficult to place.

He retrieved a fresh piece of stationary.

_Grenki -_

_Due to reasons we cannot use those names anymore. You are now Grenki. Speaking of which the croissant idea is absolute heresy, but seeing as you have a working relationship with Satan this should not surprise me. Do tell him I hope he at least is using day-old croissants or it will just fall apart. Same concept applies there as to normal bread._

_I would recommend you curb your intake of French toast in general if you are trying to remain slim, it is not a low calorie food. I recall gaining a pound or ten in the process of perfecting it. I used to pour blackstrap molasses over it. Do they have that in Russia? It's horrid. When I first started my current career and had money to spend for the first time I bought a tin of it and ate the entire thing with a spoon. I made myself sick. I grew up without a lot of money and considered it a luxury back before I knew what actual luxury was._

_Your pistol is fine. I suppose it is as good a guest as is possible, as it remains in a drawer and is very quiet. Why are you talking about it as though it is conscious? And hugging it? Is that a Russian thing, hugging one's gun? I don't approve of this, guns are inanimate objects. That is a silly thing to do. And dangerous. I suspect the St. Petersbrug obituaries are filled with victims of this strange ritual who drank too much vodka and forgot to unload their weapon first. Please don't do this, Grenki. You deserve a far better headline when your day comes. That said your country also invented a particularly risky form of roulette. It seems Russia runs largely on suicidal ideation. I'm glad you are in Buenos Ares._

_As best I can tell I am indeed still quite scary. You travel in a pack with your people, in close quarters I expect,_ camping  _no less, so it is understandably difficult to retain your threatening demeanor. I think working on your sternness is a very good idea. It has served me well thus far, though it's never been anything I had to work on. I was stern as a child._

_Kisses are coming from space?_

_Well I had better stand on the roof._

_-Mr. Abacus_

_PS: Have you given any more thought to cutting your hair? Please cut your hair._

Or at least that's what he thought it said.

**000**

Her reply took two months. The wait was agonizing but patience was, as ever, his strong suit. By the time it arrived he could very nearly read the letter unaided - for basic content, anyway. Proper nuance still needed work, but that was to be expected.

When he opened the letter he was hit not with a waft but an outright shotgun blast of vanilla. "Oh - oh god," he stammered, his eyelids fluttering. He nearly had to brace himself against the workbench as it washed over him, filling him with the sensation of being a balloon lifted on warm upward current. He drifted on this sensation for a while before floating back down to the letter, to her newly legible hand.

 _I do not like this Mr. Abacus name. This sounds like something meant to teach children to count. No, you gave me Grenki, I give you Ochki. It means glasses. Your glasses are the first thing I saw about you. I like them very much. I thought, well here is an intelligent looking man, and he is standing lead. He is not huge so he must be very smart and fast. And you are! And then I thought oh, he is very fine in the way he moves. I have to stop writing these silly things to you but I can't. Please never show these to anyone. You must promise me. Grenki has no_ heart,  _this is disgraceful._

_I asked more about the outer space gun and I am glad you will be on the roof. I will need your exact coordinates. That way kisses come directly to you and do not have to go through a roof or land on other people. They are for you, not for other people. This concept is strange to me, telling a gun where to shoot. The space gun would not be a very good weapon for me to demonstrate, just boring, pressing buttons. One job I do is put on a pretty dress and demonstrate the weapons for the buyer. This is why I travel with formal dresses and pretty gold. Have you ever fired a Degtyarev DP28 in high heels? Such a recoil on that gun it tosses grown men right over, but I do not flinch. And in a little silk dress. This sells many guns!_

_I am glad my pistol is being nice and quiet and not troubling you. Yes you are exactly right about Russia, our main export is wanting to die. Especially where I am from. You are so funny, my Ochki. I love your letters. It is looking like we might be off into the jungle again soon so I may not get another for a while. I bring them with me and read them at night with a flashlight in a tent like a little girl. I will send you the bill for the damage this is doing to my career, ha ha ha!_

_Have you been to the jungle? I love it. It is beautiful. There are so many strange and colorful things. There is a river here that glows at night where you stir the water. When you are on a boat it lights up like the stars, so there are stars above and stars below, everything else dark and you are floating. And everywhere around all you hear is the jungle. There are waterfalls leading into pools of water that are so clear you can see hundreds of feet down into nothing and strange sweet fruits growing on all the trees. One day I will run off into the jungle and live in the wild like an animal._

_Oh, Ochki, something terrible happened. I spilled my bottle of perfume on this letter. It was such an accident. Your Grenki is so clumsy._

_I am loading a clip of kisses into the space gun. Keep your eyes up._

_-Grenki_

Mordecai put the letter down, finding himself in pain. Something about this particular letter and the explosion of vanilla it came in on - a scent that now filled his apartment and would linger for two whole blissful days - was making him want to …to what? Whatever it was it was high-pitched and undignified and would never escape him in the form it desired. It wanted him to flail and squirm like people did when they looked at puppies.

Yes! Yes that was it! That was exactly it!

_Grenki!_

_It seems reading your letters for me is like looking at puppies is for most people. I literally just now discovered this! I am not terribly partial to animals so I didn't know how to classify that particular thing before, but now I believe I understand._

He paused a moment.

_Do you ever have feelings you can't identify?_

Perhaps she did.

_You think I am very fine in the way I move? Thank you and likewise, especially when you are moving down the road in a slip with blood on your face. That was one of the most skilled things I have ever seen in the course of my career. A flawless execution from start to finish. It was an absolute relief working with you. You would not believe some of the rabble I've had to endure. Or perhaps you would given your friend Dimitri._

_Your demonstration duties are relevant to my interests and worthy of further investigation. I am not surprised you sell a lot of guns. You could certainly sell me a gun. Next time we meet let me know what you have in inventory and I'll take a look. If you are dealing in military grade weaponry I'm sure there's something that would suit my fancy. You don't even have to bother with the dress and jewelry. Though I admit I would like to see you fire a Degtyarev DP28 in high heels._

_You don't like Mr. Abacus? I like Mr. Abacus! But I also like Ochki because I like imagining you saying it. And yes, I remember quite vividly your attempts to put me through my paces. Truly appalling behavior on your part. Startlingly unprofessional. Were my hand just a little less steady something terrible may have happened on the roof that night. That was needlessly risky and I hope you don't do it often._

_I find it amusing that you write out "ha ha ha." Ha ha ha._

_I have never been to the jungle, no, but your ad copy made it quite alluring. You just sold me the jungle so I imagine you do indeed sell a lot of guns. However upon further reflection I am partial to neither humidity nor insects, so I doubt I would be happy with the purchase in the long term, but that, as they say, is on me. Caveat emptor. Ha ha ha._

_Thank you for your charming attempt to assassinate me via perfume. You are not very good at making it look like an accident. You're so very clumsy you managed to include the portion about spilling the perfume in the body of the letter? It would have been more convincingly placed in a post script. I expect better from a professional of your caliber. I see what you are doing, madam. You can't pull the wool over my eyes but you can certainly make them water._

_That isn't a complaint._

_If you head back into the wild before I hear from you again, safe journey._

_-Ochki_

_PS: I imagine all that hair gets caught on just about everything in the jungle. You might want to think about how much easier your life would be if you cut it. Here, I will think about it for you: you'd stay cooler. You wouldn't have to comb all ten miles of it every day in the heat. You wouldn't have to worry about bugs crawling in it when you sleep. You also wouldn't have to worry about some machine-gun wielding boar dragging you off to his grass hut for a nightcap. Ha ha ha. It's not funny, please cut it._

**000**

_Ochki -_

_I have sad news. We are indeed off into the jungle again in three weeks, for I do not know how long. It could be many months again. Major complications requiring major fixes. Oh my prince, I am so so tired of this. Nothing goes right for us anymore but this is our own doing and that is what makes it so stupid. "Ours" is the wrong word. I have nothing to do with it. No one listens to me but when things go wrong I am blamed. I wish anyone here stood up for me the way you did. The ones that try only want me in their beds. Some days I think maybe this is it, maybe this is the day I run off and become a jungle woman._

_Ah, the running before the car crying in underthings! Yes! That is a favorite of mine, very effective but very difficult. I did it for you._

-and here a fanged sad face, winking and spouting big drooping tears. He read the line over again. She did it for  _him?_ What did that mean?

_Oh goodness Ochki, you want the weapons demonstration naked? Oh but with heels! And short hair? My you are a very demanding warlord! I suppose I can do this for you but you'll have to commit to at least twenty thousand in our stock, bare minimum. I am joking, I do not do this for such a low price, but for you I give discount. For most warlords at least three times that amount but I like you very much. But shh you must hurry before my bosses find out, I will be in trouble offering such a good deal to you. And jungle is half price today!_

He realized he'd stopped translating. His mind ground to a halt around the thought of a - a  _weapons demonstration_  with him as a demanding warlord, demanding - demanding whatever he wanted from her - out in the middle of the jungle, the middle of nowhere with nothing around but glowing rivers and strange flowers, and he was covered in military brass with a big cigar and hundreds of thousands to spend on an armory, sold by a naked short-haired wheel and dealing vanilla scented  _jungle-Innochka_ he could  _demand_   _things_   _of_  and - oh god -what if she had a  _python around her neck_ , and - and then-

-and then he realized his breath had gone ragged, his face hot and flushed, and that he could never ever imagine this little scenario in public because the potential social disaster was pointed directly up at him.

Embarrassed, he composed himself. He put the letter aside for a while and came back to it.

_Appalling behavior! Ha ha ha. My funny funny Ochki. If I thought you would slip I would not have drawn. I just wanted to see how you looked aiming at me._

_Dimitri is NOT my friend. He thinks I belong to him. He is also the son of my boss. I hate him. I have a special curse to hell for him, he is even worse than most of the rabble in this walk of life. Thankfully he is not coming back to the jungle, his father has called him back to Moscow. I said I will not work with him any longer. He has gotten much worse since we were in St. Louis. He knows I prefer you. He knows I never preferred him to anything. I prefer a barrel of rotting pig lungs to Dimitri. Terrible terrible hog of a man. I hope he dies burning._

_Oh my sweet Ochki, I will not hear from you before I leave for the jungle. It seems I am losing my translator as well, so this address will no longer be a good one to reach me by the time I return. But I will take your letters with me. Think of me. I think of you wherever I go, beautiful prince._

_Thousands and thousands of kisses,_

_-Grenki_

He quickly checked the post date on the envelope. If she was indeed leaving three weeks after that date he had six days to get a letter to her. He was somewhat certain the post office offered a suitably accelerated rate so he stood a good enough chance to make an attempt. He always sent the letters to the same Venezuelan address but Innochka sent letters from all over the southern Americas. He was unsure how this worked, though now it seemed he had been sending his letters to the woman Innochka had translating for her, who then relayed them to Innochka in some fashion. Via telegraph, likely. That was good. If he had to get a letter to Buenos Ares it never would have made it.

He retrieved a fresh sheet of paper.

_Grenki -_

_I hope this arrives before you leave for the jungle. If so know I will be thinking of you as requested. You did not need to request it, it's nothing that can be helped._

_I am sorry your crew does not listen to you. You are intelligent and resourceful and professional. These are not the kinds of fools a person of your caliber should be made to suffer. Have you ever considered going freelance? It might be a shaky road at first but someone of your talent and unique approach should be able to do quite well for herself in any major city. You are too good for that rabble. I am certain you would thrive should you strike out on your own. Hopefully this current venture will be easier without Dimitri around to get in your way._

_So off you go again. I am not sure what to say other than that I wish you the best of luck and a profitable venture into the jungle. But I also hope there are boat rides on the starry river and strange sweet fruits and clear ponds one thousand feet deep. I recently learned that people who enjoy travel love it quite deeply. You should give serious thought to becoming a jungle woman, Grenki. I think it would suit you. You belong in Eden. I won't hear from you for months, so when I worry about you dying of your hair I will instead think of you as Eve, making the jungle more beautiful._

_And professional._

_What am I saying, you won't die of anything. You are a vicious Grenki, and if anything a Lilith. Now I am the one being silly._

_Sell lots of guns and come back in one piece, madam._

_-Ochki_

**000**


	20. a sickly runt

_It's set in the friggin' 1920's so you probably already know this, but the views of the characters do not reflect the views of the author etc etc blah blah blah_

**000**

Six months passed from the day of her last letter.

He was a balloon slowly deflating over the course of two seasons. The days of summer and fall curled up and died one after another. By September he felt dry inside. By Halloween he was certain she was dead.

"Добрый вечер, Эли. Какого цвета твои носки?" Mrs. Babikov asked as he retrieved his pad and pen. "/ _Good evening, Eli. What color are your socks?_ /?

"They're - " he began. "Добрый вечер миссис Бабиков. Они …Они темно-синий сег - сегодня," he stammered. / _Good evening Mrs. Babikov. They're navy blue today./"_ He'd asked her to start surprising him with questions to keep him on his toes. He gave an appreciative nod. "Thank you."

"In Russian!"

"Спасибо."

But he wasn't sure why he still bothered. He wasn't sure why he'd bothered in the first place. He'd only started seeing Mrs. Babikov with the intent to read Russian, and possibly write it, yet somehow she'd managed to upsell him on speaking it as well. Her praise was given so sparsely, like grains of sugar on a sheet of cold steel, that when she started in on how very clever he was and how quickly he'd advanced he was so surprised and pleased that he she could have talked him into just about anything. She'd used this dark power to talk him into  _talking_. Of course once the lessons were purchased her strict and witholding manner returned. Mordecai realized on some level he'd been played, but he wasn't overly upset by this. Given his circumstances speaking Russian was quite useful, and he  _would_ need to be tricked into learning.

Useful if Innochka wasn't dead, that was.

He rubbed his eyes.

/ _Tired today, Eli?_ /

/ _A bit, yes, Mrs. Babikov_./

/ _Black tea, then?_ /

/ _I'd like that, thank you_./

He wasn't sure where this certainty Innochka was dead came from, especially since it wasn't a certainty at all. Some hopelessly overdramatic tragedy-loving part of his mind had worked its way up from the depths to seize on these horrible images of a dead Innochka. Dead in the jungle no less, her body eaten by animals within hours, the scraps decaying within days, all evidence of her existence erased save her letters to him. It grew ever more operatic with time, but this imagining had an ungroundedness about it that kept him from fully engaging with it, enticingly horrific as it was. It was as though he perpetually found himself listening to a frightened child's story, and though that story was well told it was not supported by evidence. Innochka was bright and capable and did this for a living. Evidence said she was fine.

 _That's not evidence,_  the frightened child said, the bespectacled little know it all.  _That's anecdote._

And that was when the kid got a claw in and Mordecai began to feel sick. It was a mystery he hated living in. He hated open ended questions. He hated unresolved answers. He hated taking her pistol in and out of its drawer. He hated holding her letters to his nose for any hint of anything. He hated that the stripe of color she'd added to his life only made the rest look grayer once it was gone. He hated that his chest now hosted a small, permanent tornado where there used to be a strange jungle flower.

**000**

But he made do.

He tried to make do.

He would have dipped over Niagara Falls in a pickle barrel if he thought it would end with a gold envelope in his mailbox but he made do. After all, French toast was still good. He was still proficient at his job, and with the Natasha Orlov case gone silent and nothing from the Russians Asa Sweet's infantile winking had reduced by about sixty percent. However his book balancing skills had taken a considerable dive since the introduction of the  _demanding warlord_  fiction into his mental landscape. The numbers had a bad habit of dissolving into…into  _that_ , and he had a bad habit of indulging it. It was compelling. It was deeply, deeply compelling in a way that was objectively absurd and infantile and could make an hour snap by in a flash. And that, of course, just made everything all the worse. Especially since the thought of her prancing around in such a manner for some  _actual_  warlord made him want to punch a wall and track her through the Amazon before said warlord grabbed her by the hair and had his way with her at the point of one of the guns she'd just sold him.

 _It's happening right now,_  the bespectacled child said.  _It's happening as we speak_.

"Hush," he said into Marigold's back taxes.

"Hush little taxes don't you cry," sang a voice from the hall. "Mordy's gonna sing you a lullabye."

He glanced up. Asa Sweet stood in the doorway with a smirking, smoking Wes Clyde sidled up next to him.

Mordecai scowled. " _Mordy's_   _gonna_  tear you a refund from the very fabric of the IRS's slacks," he said. He glanced to Asa's left. "Mr. Clyde."

"Mr. Heller," Mr. Clyde hissed and grinned coldly.

"I see you two are still on formal terms," Asa said. "Tonight should be a way to fix that situation."

"I wasn't aware the situation was broken," Mordecai said.

"As manager it's my job to foster better communication, teamwork, and morale among the staff. That's why I'm sending the pair of you pricks out for a pickup."

Mordecai raised his eyebrows. "Asa, I'm occupied," he said, gesturing sharply to his paperwork. "Can't you find literally anyone else?"

"Chesterton and what's-his-name both have that influenza making the rounds-"

"-cause they're friggin'  _homos_ ," Mr. Clyde added.

"- and you two are the only ones still sober," Asa finished, glancing askance at Mr. Clyde. "Halloween party up in the ballroom. Everyone's drunk early. In fact we're nearly out of booze. Hence the pickup."

"A  _pickup_ ," Mordecai said. " _Really._  I believe my renewed contract as of July of last year stipulates that -"

"These  _are_  emergency circumstances."

"You actually read it?"

"Of course! Why are you always so shocked when you realize I'm not a complete clown?"

"Ask  _yourself_ that question, Asa."

Mr. Clyde emitted a sort of strange wet chittering it took Mordecai a moment to place as laughter. "Good one," he said. "Good one."

"Mordecai's a funny guy," Asa said to Mr. Clyde.

"Plays poker  _funny_ , that's for sure," Mr. Clyde said, blowing his foul tobacco smoke into the office.

Mordecai rolled his eyes. "This from the man who had an ace  _literally_  fall from his sleeve three weeks ago. It's an  _expression_."

He grinned. "That was then, baby. This is now."

Mordecai hit the desk. "Mr. Clyde, that is a complete non-sequitor!"

"All right, simmer down, girls!" Asa barked. "Now if the two of you can stop snapping one another's brassieres for a few minutes I'll give you the details."

**000**

"Chesterton and Renner?  _Homos._  Completely homosexual. That's why they're both sick at the same time. You cannot with an ounce of honesty in your Jew body tell me those two are not the biggest friggin' homos on the planet," Mr. Clyde said. "Ho. Mos. I bet they were playing hide the sausage in the sewer canal in this very car."

Mordecai shuddered. "I'm not really sure there are more ways I can make it clear to you that I don't care. And with all this talk about  _homos_  I would appreciate it if you'd refrain from remarking on my  _Jew body_."

"You know who else is a homo?"

"Please just drive the car."

"Asa Sweet."

"I don't -  _sorry?_ "

"Ha! You perked up, look at that," Mr. Clyde said. "Why don't cha ask him out, homo?"

"Are you trying to beat your own record of how often you can say 'homo' while you drive?"

"Heh heh. Good one, homo."

"Good enough to buy some blessed silence?"

"Look at you with your fancy-man book-words!"

" _Fancy-man book-words_? What book? The Bible?"

Mr. Clyde laughed. "Good one, good one."

"Good one, good one," Mordecai imitated. "Tell me, Mr. Clyde, how recently did you learn to read?"

"Your mother taught me to read last month."

Mordecai tried to reply but the input - mocking his mother on one hand, capitulating to having only achieved literacy last month on the other - confounded him utterly.

"Heh heh heh." Mr. Clyde retrieved a pack of cigarettes from his jacket and bit one out. "I'd offer you one but only confirmed non-homos get smokes from my pack."

"I am absolutely perishing from this sense of exclusion." He considered this a moment. "How do you confirm someone isn't a  _homo_? You probably have to do something pretty  _homo_."

"Ooh,  _Mordy_  you  _flirt_."

"I -  _what!?_ "

"Oh look, here we are! Ready for some heavy liftin' buddy?" Mr. Clyde said as they rolled slowly down a long gravel drive. He started gently hitting the brake in time with a song that came on the radio.

"Please release me from this nightmaremobile at your nearest possible convenience," Mordecai said.

"That's right, run from our love," he said and grinned. "I thought we had a connection, man."

Mordecai gave him an incredulous look. "You are an incredibly strange man. Please just stop talking."

"Heh heh heh. I-"

"To anyone. Ever." Mordecai said and got out of the car while it was still moving. He spent the remainder of the evening pointedly ignoring Mr. Clyde. He had grown adept at controlling his more animalistic impulses so as to avoid another  _Sniffles_ incident - Atlas had never been so angry with him, and that anger forever withered whatever temporary relief he'd have gained from any future  _morale-destroying, law enforcement-attracting_  indulgences - but some men seriously tried his patience. Thankfully it was easily enough put aside if there was work to be done. And, as it happened, influenza viruses to be caught.

The first two weeks of November found Mordecai waylaid with an illness that, at the height of its stomach-blowing, throat-swelling misery, genuinely had him reaching for the phone until he realized there was no one he could call who cared. He could die alone in this apartment and he would only be discovered when Asa Sweet needed him or his fluids began leaking through the floor, whichever came first. No one cared that he was in sick and in pain. So he bundled himself up and trudged through the rain to the nearest deli he knew of, where he planned to eat chicken matzo ball soup and sulk in a corner booth. The squat, motherly waitress who brought him his soup hovered for a moment, eyeing him critically.

"What?" he asked, bristling.

She sighed and suddenly pressed the back of one hand to his forehead and the back of the other to hers. His instinctual flinching away was tempered by the familiarity of the gesture. It was something his mother did.

"Sweetheart, you are burning up," she said. "Why isn't anyone taking care of you?"

He blinked. "I -" he began. His throat ached. "I don't really know anyone here."

"New to St. Louis?"

"No. Yes. I … don't know." His head swam. He coughed into his fist.

She shook her head. "Say no more, honey. Stay here as long as you like, I'll bring you a newspaper and some orange juice. On the house." She winked. It was not a smarmy Asa Sweet wink. "Anything else you need just holler. Okay?"

He nodded. "Thank you."

She smiled and went behind the counter, at which sat a little boy in knee pants drawing in a notebook. He said something to her and she leaned over the notebook to look at whatever he'd drawn, and after a moment scratched his head and kissed his cheek. The little boy smiled.

Mordecai tilted his head. He knew women did this, that for some reason they had a compulsion to care for everyone around them. Last time he was this sick Mitzi tended to him, bringing him ginger tea and nagging him to put the ledgers away and go home. Even  _Serafine_  once tried to offer him some smelly voodoo poultice to help a knife wound on his arm heal better. He knew this was normal, part of the childbearing instinct, part of  _evolution_ \- he'd been thinking in biological terms since P. Martin Somerhaus mentioned the Galapagos. Watching this woman with her son made him glad she'd decided to take him on as an extra cub for the duration of his stay the cafe, despite that he was a sickly runt and unlikely to survive. That was … well, it was  _nice_ of her.

Innochka wasn't classically  _nice_ but she would probably take care of him, sickly runt though he was. She was very much a woman and probably had that instinct. She would fuss over him, bring him tea and make him soup. After she messed it up she would go pick him up some soup instead, and bring it to him in his bed. And maybe she would stay there with him to keep the isolation at bay. Normally he treasured his isolation, but when he was this ill it just made everything hurt more.

Orange juice and a newspaper appeared before him.

"There you go honey," the waitress cooed and patted his shoulder.

He shut his eyes at the contact. "Thank you," he said, his voice hoarse.

He unfolded the newspaper but didn't read it. The thought of Innochka in his home caring for him filled him with a sour lonesome longing, the echo of an echo of her that remained after such a long time without a letter. He closed his eyes and leaned his head against the wall, miserable.  _Grenki,_   _please scratch my head_ , he thought.  _Please kiss my cheek. Please make everything stop hurting_.

And she could probably do it.

She probably really could.

**000**

He was going on thirty four hours of nothing but vague twilight sleep perpetually interrupted by lack of oxygen when the phone rang. Mordecai picked it up, intending to answer with  _hello_ , but instead produced something akin to "Huullughk?"

"Wow, still that bad?" Asa said.

"Bugh," Mordecai replied.

"They should declare a state of goddam emergency. Marigold is  _empty_. I haven't seen this many men down since the war. Wes got it when you did. I think it gave him an identity crisis."

Despite himself Mordecai gave a low laugh, which quickly turned into a cough. His head pounded. "Who - who's the homo  _now,_ Wes _?_ "

"We all are. Marigold is a bunch of homos. This is news to no one. Anyway that's not why I called. I thought you might like to know that we got a little bite from our friends in the East."

Mordecai's eyes widened. He sat up on his elbow. "What?" He coughed, which rapidly turned into hacking, which then turned into a bout of hacking bad enough that he had to set the phone down and get a glass of water. By the time he picked the phone up again he was exhausted. "What do you m-" he began, but starting hacking anew.

"Good lord, kid. Have you seen a doctor?"

He cleared his throat several times. "I hate - I hate doctors. What do you mean a 'bite'?" he finally gasped.

"I mean they inquired about working with us again. Apparently there's something coming through here on a train they're interested in. That part's not for the phone."

His heart pounded. "The same - " he coughed -"The same contingent?"

"That I don't know."

"Oh," he said, disappointed. "Did they mention when?"

"No, but I got the impression it would be soon. I was actually calling to see if your girl wrote about it."

"My girl?" Mordecai tried to fend off another bout of hacking by aggressively clearing his throat into his fist. Though he had several problems with that classification of her he was too tired to argue the point. If indeed it was her group making their way back up to St. Louis it seemed like something she would have written of as soon as she was able. Then again if she was still in the wild her own superiors may not be in constant contact with her. She may not know of it herself. Would she emerge from the jungle just to be told she was headed to St. Louis?

When the concept of Innochka returning to St. Louis congealed in his mind something inside Mordecai froze up. It was as though the thought was too bulging with … with  _stuff_ for him to properly defuse while also being sick and on a phone call. He tried to talk and got into another fit of hacking, this one ending in some dry gagging. He pressed the phone receiver into the mattress so Asa didn't hear it.

"No," he wheezed miserably once he finally could. "I haven't heard from her in months."

"Oh," Asa paused for a long moment. "What, did you mess it up?"

"No, I didn't  _mess it up,_ " Mordecai snapped. "There's no postal service in the Amazon."

"What's she doing in the Amazon?"

"Things that aren't for the phone." He frowned and cleared his throat. "Where is the contingent coming from? North or South?"

"No idea about that either. Look, It isn't much but I figured you'd like to know."

"I appreciate you keeping me informed," Mordecai said, breathing evenly, trying not to erupt into another bout of hacking. "Wait. Did…did you say a train? A  _train-focused_  operation?"

"That's the jist of it."

Mordecai paused. "Really?"

"Yes, really."

The corner of his mouth ticked up. He cleared his throat again. "How charming," he wheezed.

"It might be because you're sick but it sounds like you actually mean that."

"There's a certain romantic charm to -" he began, but started hacking again. "To-"

"Wow. Look, call a goddam doctor. Call our guy, he'll come to your place."

"I'm doing everything a doctor would have me do. I told you I hate doctors."

"I promise you hate 'em less than being that sick. You sound like twice baked garbage. Do what needs to be done to get yourself better, you're useless like this. Things are piling up with you out of commission."

"I -" Mordecai began, but he was unable to dispute it before the chastening set in. He coughed. "I understand."

"No problem. Take care."

He hung up the phone and lay back down on the bed, the room swimming. He threw the covers off himself, suddenly stifling hot. He tried to process what had just been discussed on the phone but found himself falling sleep. He was entirely depleted and didn't have much choice in the matter. Seeing how useless it would be to fight it, he rolled on his side and shut his eyes.

But something was moving up his body.

It took him a moment to realize that something was wrong. A thick, warm, smooth mass of muscle slowly curled around him, thighs to shoulders. "Hm - ?" he asked into the dark room, but whatever it was snuggled up under his chin, scratched his head, smelled of vanilla. He opened his eyes and found himself looking up into Innochka's face.

" _Ochki_ ," she purred, and kissed his cheek.

"Oh!" he said. "You're back. Do you know you're coming back?"

She gave him that slow blink, that hint of a smile. He returned it. He reached up to touch her face but when he took his hand away the place he'd touched was bloody. "Uh oh," he said. "Bam."

She smiled and flicked a forked tongue at him. He blinked. She didn't usually have a forked tongue, did she? He glanced down to see that her body, elongated and elaborately scaled, was firmly wrapped around his.

His eyebrows raised. "You're different," he said.

She nodded. "This sells many guns!"

The talk of selling guns set off the  _demanding warlord_ fiction in his mind, and even now his impulse was not to think of it, but she was here and all around him and he couldn't help himself. Just as he did part of Innochka's elongated body slid up between his legs. He gasped and squirmed and woke up.

Light blasted into his eyes from a crack in the curtains. It was morning, and whatever he'd have liked to savor from that dream crumbled in the face of the pure smelly grossness of his physical condition. His limbs were shaky, his chest aching, his head and throat a mess, and he couldn't remember the last time he'd managed to keep anything down but broth. Sweet was right, this had gone on long enough, and if Innochka was indeed returning he'd like to remain alive to see her.

He sat up in bed and moaned as the blood swam around his body.

He needed to call a goddam doctor.

**000**

It was always a choice between being violated in his own home or being violated in the doctor's office.

He hated everything about doctors and doctor's visits. He hated having to remove his shirt and let someone touch him, hold a cold stethoscope to his chest. He hated letting someone poke around, sometimes painfully, in his mouth and nose and ears. He hated waiting rooms full of germ-ridden plebians more than he hated having a stranger in his home so he decided to have the doctor visit him. He was Marigold's doctor-on-call, and there was a hardness in his eyes that spoke of years in and around the speakieasies, as did his gold watch.

"You have pneumonia," the doctor said as Mordecai hurriedly put his robe back on.

" _What?_ " Mordecai said and proceeded to hack until he dry heaved.

"I'm not sure why this comes as a surprise to you. I have something to help with that cough," the doctor said, and left Mordecai with an array of small tinted bottles. He followed the doctor's directions to the letter, and within two days he felt well enough to wrap himself in layers of clothing and make a small outing to the grocer to pick up something other than broth. On the way back he opened his mailbox only to have it vomit mail at him, far more mail than he'd ever seen in it. It fell onto the floor around his shoes and he just stood there looking at it.

"Well I know how that feels," he muttered to the mailbox, and stooped to pick up the fallen mail. He found himself looking for a hint of gold before he fully realized how likely there was to be one, and suddenly he  _knew_  there was one and he was sorting through a week's neglected mail looking for it, and there it was between an Italian menu and an economics journal - small and gold and perfect and  _his_. Of course she wrote him. Of course she did.

He opened it. Vanilla, the curled python monogram, her angular hairpin handwriting.

_Oh my darling wonderful Ochki! I am coming back to you!_

**000**


	21. a bit of numb brain

_asa_

_do you even trains bro_

**000**

Innochka's contingent were not due for a month. The Russians clarified with Asa's employer what, exactly, the job was. Mordecai, most of the way well, sat across the desk from Asa as he took the phone call. He tried to stem his growing excitement into a mere cautious optimism, but by the time Asa got off the phone the little boy that still occupied a creaky twin bed in Mordecai's heart was jumping up and down on it.

Asa hung up the phone looking mystified. "Do you know anything about-"

"Yes. Everything. Put me in charge of this," Mordecai said.

Asa paused, startled. "Wow. Well I can't really say no to that, can I?"

"No, you can't. I promise you there's no one else within states of St. Louis that's as prepared for this as I am."

Asa chuckled incredulously. "How so?"

"Asa," Mordecai said, "would you like to know what my primary concern in life was from ages approximately three to … to much older than three? I'll tell you: trains."

Asa smiled. "From the looks of it it's still a primary concern."

"It obviously isn't but it certainly never lost the  _spirit_ of a primary concern. A large subsection of that concern has always been reserved for train robberies. They were of endless fascination to me as a boy, and I would be lying if I said I didn't still own quite a few books on the subject. It's something I knew was unlikely to ever fall under the purview of my chosen career, but …" and here he tried to keep his smile small, "…but I always hoped it might."

Asa's eyebrows raised. "Is that  _enthusiasm_  I hear?"

"It is. I spent many hours of my childhood arguing with my sister over who got to be Billy the Kid."

"You're the boy, you get to be Billy the Kid."

"Hmm. Yes," He nodded gravely. "That was my thinking as well. Sadly that logic didn't hold much water with her. Which she made sure I knew, both loudly and repeatedly, until at some point  _Bonnie the Kid_ was invented" - and here he made a face - "and it all went downhill after that."

"Little sisters," Asa said, shaking his head. "They ruin everything."

"They certainly do," Mordecai said. "So what are the details?"

But even as Asa filled him in Mordecai found his mind wandering. It was a curious and foreign sort of wandering, new to him. It was as though he pressed against some impermeable membrane behind which was the reality of Innochka's return, but he could not penetrate the barrier. So he poked at it, ambled around it, pressed against it, but no matter what he did it he remained numb to it. He found the numbness curious but also convenient. It freed his mind to focus on other matters.

He turned his attention back to Asa, and to a dream that had been with him far longer than she had.

**000**

The train depot was extraordinarily quiet at three in the morning. It was a quiet Mordecai nearly found it difficult to match through the process of uncoupling one car from another and unhooking the air brake, then carefully reattaching them. He stole into the depot like a shadow, unhooking car after car, links new or rusted, until the process was so driven into his muscle memory he could do it in his sleep no matter the condition of the links he'd be faced with on the day. Between this and copious research at the library his schedule was suddenly busier than it had been in years. This was the only project of this size he'd ever planned and by far the most intricate. He adored that magical intricacy.

He let the pin drop and sat up. He stretched his back and took an admiring look around the moonlit depot, all monotone night colors and gently slumbering steel giants. It smelled of oil and metal and dirt, and was filled with neatly partitioned tracks that divided the spaces between the cars, which were themselves neatly partitioned. The linkage mechanism that held the cars together was an elegant bit of engineering he enjoyed getting to know, enjoyed working on with his hands. He liked the sounds it made, the clicks and little squeals. He liked the control he had over those sounds if he moved a component this way or that. He liked how sore his arms and shoulders felt the next day and he liked how his loose sweater and soft overalls felt, so different than anything he usually left the house in. Even the handle of the toolbox pressing through his work glove took on an extra weight and comfort in this silent nighttime wonderland. It gave him a sense of safety he knew was entirely unwarranted. There was always a dangerous element that lingered on and around trains, but the boy within him was nonetheless romanced. He took a moment to marvel at a toweringly beautiful black behemoth of an engine, the iron polished to a reflective shine, and felt for a moment that old awe. The awe of a little boy who finally found something he understood.

When he'd told Asa trains were at one time his primary concern he was not kidding. His mother used to tell stories at family gatherings about how a very small Mordecai went through a phase where he would turn and walk away from anyone who tried to talk to him about anything but trains. He could be made to behave himself with a train-related promise. He drew trains on his bedroom walls, and when he outgrew that, in piles of notebooks. As soon as he could read he read about trains, and when he'd checked out every book on the subject in his local library he nagged his mother to take him to the downtown library. When he was old enough to get there himself he'd spend hours in the science and engineering section learning everything he could about them, about every nut and bolt and screw.

He loved them. They were perhaps the only thing he was absolutely sure he loved. Smoothly chugging machines he could walk into, big speeding metal behemoths built for one purpose only, which they performed without fail - but when they did fail, the failure was satisfyingly catastrophic, with derailed cars and explosions and people dying. Those were good, but the best possible train-related catastrophe was a robbery.

Everything about a train robbery was magical. Robbing a train took forethought and planning, brains and skill. In order to rob a train you had to understand everything about how that particular train worked, you had to know the secret sigils of the station approaches, you had to know who was on the train and where, you had to know which brakes to cut and how to change tracks without warning. Sometimes you needed to know how to wire up dynamite or exactly what amount of lead was needed to imitate the amount of gold you'd steal before it reached the weigh station. He even admired the showiness of the more theatrically gallant train robbers - no stealing from poor men with calloused hands, women, or children, and no undue casualties. A good train robbery had no casualties. A perfect train robbery didn't so much as alarm anyone.

He pressed his gloved hand to the engine one last time before slipping away from the depot. His would not be a perfect train robbery, but he was almost certain it could be a good one. He was determined to imitate the masters. If there were any casualties he would consider it a black mark on his performance, but in all likelihood wouldn't beat himself up about it  _too_  much.

**000**

He stopped attending his lessons with Mrs. Babikov. They were prepaid and for this he gave himself a proper chastening about wasting money, but other than that he made no attempt to rectify the situation. Not that there was anything to rectify. He was busy. The proper things needed to be properly prioritized. Speaking a foreign language was a distant second to making sure this project was flawlessly planned, and written correspondence was  _certainly_  a distant third.

_Oh my darling wonderful Ochki I am coming back to you!_

He wasn't sure how it was that he could read these words and feel nothing, but that seemed to be the case. There was no place for them in his brain. They refused to represent anything real. He could barely read the rest of the letter. It was as though his lessons started to melt and the Cyrillic faded back into meaningless chicken scratches. She talked about the jungle and guns and how wonderful he was and kisses, all of which previously sent him into a  _tizzy,_  all  _aflutter,_  but now sparked nothing but a dim - a dim -

-he frowned with effort -

-a dim sort of…sore…panicky…nothing.

He had no idea how to address it, so he didn't. He planned for the job. He spent most of his time at Marigold, away from his apartment which now reeked of vanilla - her vanilla letters, his vanilla beans, even a vanilla candle he stole -  _stole_  - because it smelled so good to him that he felt a flutter of greasy shame when he picked it up. He was absolutely certain if he took it to the counter the clerk would know it was a … a … well that it wasn't a chaste purchase. So he slipped it into his coat pocket like a delinquent teenager and walked out. It cast such a strong scent that he didn't even need to light it in order to fill his home with a perfect amount of vanilla, just enough to occasionally whisper past and make his eyelids heavy. But now it was just a sweet smell that wanted to mean what it meant before but was being smothered by a pillow in his heart and mind. So he focused on the train. He went to the depot at night to obsess over the linkages, hopping from car to car, exhausting himself so when he got home and fell into bed he passed out without a thought.

But the dreams.

Oh god, the dreams. He woke from them straining and panting and deeply embarrassed. It seemed that the more muffled his waking emotions the more exquisite and intense the dreams, but they weren't even particularly  _explicit_. There were … well, kisses, certainly, but just like the demanding warlord fiction everything went question marks for him after a certain point, so dreams or fictions usually revolved around her simply being near him. Just very close to him. Once she even crawled into his warlord lap and pushed the python aside to offer him her neck in animal submission. It was the sharpest dream memory he'd had in years, held in focus by the powerful sensation in evoked in him. He used to have to deliberately erase it from his mind but now it was under the same muting pillow as everything else related to her. The muting was both perplexing and fortunate. His duty of planning the train robbery came with the added new experience of speaking to a group of people, and that would be a very bad place to find himself suddenly besieged by Innochka turning her sweetly scented neck to him.

It was curious being the focus of twenty men in a nonthreatening situation. Curious and unnerving. It wasn't a position he was used to. Only once or twice at the Little Daisy had he been cajoled into relating a relevant anecdote for the staff at "family" dinners. He was well spoken, displaying none of the nervousness he felt with so many eyes scrutinizing him. Nevertheless he hated it. Any time eyes were on him long enough someone started laughing, and this was what he expected when he sat with the team of twenty Marigold men Asa procured for his operation.

"Good evening, gentlemen. I won't waste your time with small talk, let's get to it," he said, placing his stack of documentation and schematics on the table. He decided beforehand he would be curt and dry and to the point, figuring that would stave off the ribbing long enough to actually relay the plan. He steeled himself but to his surprise he got all the way through the presentation without evoking a single laugh at his expense. He even sneezed a few times and not so much as a chuckle. They listened raptly, brows furrowed. One or two even asked relevant and thoughtful questions. The room was silent with obedience, and if he wasn't mistaken  _respect_. It was almost like when  _Atlas_  relayed a plan. He even found it within him to give a soft-spoken Atlas-style dismissal: "Thank you very much for your time, gentlemen," and  _mean_  it.

"Nice work. Looks pretty solid," Asa said afterwards, looking at Mordecai's plans.

"Yes, it seems to have gone over very well," he said. "None of the distasteful jibes of the poker table, I noticed."

Asa studied the plans. He smiled down at something he saw in them but didn't respond.

"None of the … uh … no distasteful jibes at my expense,  _I noticed_ ," Mordecai repeated.

Asa glanced up at him. "Why would there be?"

"It seems there always are." He sneezed. "Excuse me."

Asa shook his head. "Bless you. And no. They know you have this thing nailed."

Mordecai's eyes widened. "They do?" He sneezed again. "Excuse me."

"Bless you. Of course they do." Asa tilted his head. "You're surprised? You're the hardest working guy here, they all know that."

"Well, I …" Mordecai paused. He cleared his throat and straightened his vest. "Well - I'm just surprised they're capable of knowing a good plan when they see one." He paused again. "Seeing as we've established Marigold is a bunch of homos."

And at this Asa gave a laugh so loud, high, and surprised that Mordecai jumped.

"HA! Good one, good one!"

"Don't  _you_  start," Mordecai replied warningly.

Asa chuckled and picked up a sheet of paper, on which was detailed and integral part of the plan. "So I take it from this things are going well with the Mrs?"

Mordecai blinked. 'What?"

Asa jerked his chin at the paper. "This. Didn't you tell me she was an actress of some sort?"

"In - Innochka?" he asked. Her name squirmed on the way out. Asa raised an eyebrow. "Yes - well - yes, she is," Mordecai continued, collecting himself. "Her expertise makes her perfect for that part of the operation. It would be a far clumsier enterprise without her. She has quite a gift."

"She must," Asa said, looking at the paper. "You made her the star of the show."

"She's - " Mordecai thought of the unanswered letter sitting on his workbench. He straightened and lifted his chin. "There's no show, Asa, and no star. There's merely a job to be done and those who are best able to do it."

Asa smiled. "Whatever you say. She'll be here in less than a week, are you ready?"

Mordecai's eyes widened.  _No,_ he wanted to say.  _I am utterly in no way ready. Her part of my brain has turned numb. How does one revive a bit of numb brain? I can't exactly shake it awake like a sleeping limb. Believe me, I've tried._ "I'm …" he began, but he was unsure why he was talking. He could easily plan a train robbery but he had no end to that particular sentence.

Instead, he sneezed. "Excuse me."

"Bless you." Asa took a cigar from the humidor on his desk and lit it. "Get some sleep."

"Sorry?"

"Make sure you get enough sleep this week. Drink a bunch of water. Get fully recovered. Don't wanna be sneezing down onto the poor girl's face."

" _Asa!_ " Mordecai snapped. "I - just -you -just-" he stammered as he hurriedly gathered the plans and schematics up. "I'm -you're - if you would have the faintest amount of -of - if you'd just-" he shoved the papers under his arm and put on his hat. "I'm going," he said. "I have trains to … do."

"You have trains to do?" he asked, chuckling.

"Yes! No! Goodbye! Goodbye Asa!" he said, took his coat and made to stalk out the door.

"Wait."

" _What?"_

Asa held up a sheet of paper Mordecai missed in his hasty gathering of his plans. "Just where in the hell are we supposed to get a truck full of chickens?"

**000**

The week passed far faster than it had any right to, and his brain remained no less numb to the reality of her arrival.

_Oh my darling wonderful Ochki I am coming back to you!_

"You are a letter," he said absently to it. He sat in his armchair in his robe, befuddled because he'd awoken earlier than he intended despite the tincture he'd picked up to help him sleep. He'd reviewed the plans so exhaustively that reviewing them again would be torture, so due to his foreshortened rest he found himself adrift within a period of free time, his first in a month. He used it to sit with her last letter, to which he'd never replied. He kept it folded closed, did not want to look at the words. He held it under his nose but it only smelled slightly of vanilla. But soon - _that very day_ \- he would be in the presence of that scent again, only it wouldn't be floating off the beloved sheets of paper Innochka had become. It would be floating off of her, of the actuality of her, and she would be there before him, in front of him, talking to him, expecting replies from him, wanting - probably wanting - to -to touch him-

He leapt up from the armchair and decided to simultaneously get dressed and make French toast. He ended up turning in a circle like a rowboat with one oar. Should he get dressed? Or should he make French toast? Getting dressed before cooking was almost never a good idea, and he hadn't made any custard the night before so it certainly wasn't going to be a meal worth getting dressed  _for._  But on the issue of getting dressed what was he going to wear that day?

Oh god.

 _What_  was he going to  _wear_?

**000**

The carnage he made of his closet was not pretty, and certainly far too big of a mission to end up with what was approximately what he wore most days. The difference was these were the very best individual pieces of what he wore most days, and all of it freshly ironed and pressed. Ironing and pressing every ironable and pressable item he would wear that evening filled the extra time nicely. He used it to quite pointedly review the heist in his mind despite the agony. He shined his shoes and meditated on trains. Before he left his apartment he hung the pocketwatch she'd given him on his vest.

The day passed so quickly he wished he could take a knife to its throat and make it lie still. Due to what he was sure was their typical excellent planning the Russians hit a delay in customs coming out of Cuba and arrived a full day later than expected, so he would barely have any time to brief Innochka on her role in the robbery before they were actually performing it. It was to happen that night at three am. The Russians were expected to arrive at ten pm. He was confident of her ability to perform admirably but still irked at the lack of time she would have to prepare. He had no idea how she put up with those jackasses.

"Looking sharp," Asa said with a firm nod when Mordecai met the Marigold contingent at the docks.

"Thank you," Mordecai said. His voice was hollow.

Asa slapped him companionably on the shoulder. "Keep your cool, Heller. You're good at that." His expression brightened. He jerked his chin towards the Mississippi. "There's the boat."

Mordecai spun. The vessel came around a turn. It was a utilitarian but lit up like a wedding cake, making the patches of ice on the river glow titanium white. The Russian contingent stood at the railings. They were loud and boisterous, with clouds of cigar smoke and drinks blithely in hand. His heart pounded but he did not see her.

Suddenly there was movement. Someone was shoved aside. A feminine form forced itself to the front, one hand on her hat and the other holding the neck of her fur coat shut, her chin lifted, searching the faces of Marigold for his.

**000**


	22. an exquisite ice pick

"Ma'am - 'scuse me, ma'am?" Daryl Harper, train conductor, said. "Ma'am, you have to move your chicken truck."

The woman in question sat on the tracks sobbing, leaning against the driver's side door. The truck was parked across the tracks right at the entrance of a bridge. She wore an expensive black coat and copious jewelry, but her face was covered in mascara tear tracks. Her sobs were ugly, the kind that involved a runny nose and a mouth that stayed open far too long. Every time Daryl Harper tried to get near her or help her to her feet she screamed.

"Ma'am, could you just -"

"Get away!" she shouted in heavily accented English.

"I think 'get away' is all she knows how to say," the security guard said. "Ma'am, your truck can't be on the tracks like this. Ma'am? Listen. Ma'am?"

"Get away!"

He crouched down to get on eye level with her. "Look ma'am, I understand you're upset about … about your chickens, but we gotta move that truck. Now look, you can just sit pretty if you want, sober up a bit off in the grass over there, all right? Don't worry about a thing, just give me the keys. All right?" His hand crept towards hers, in which she white knuckled the keys to the poultry truck. "Just…give me…"

"NO!" she screamed, kicking at him, wrenching the keys out of his reach.

"Ma'am - I'm gonna have to ask you to calm down now, and hand me the -" he tried to grab her arm. "Daryl, help me grab her."

"No! NO! Get away!" she squirmed away from them but they were grabbing at her, at the keys. Cornered, she suddenly shoved the hand with the keys beneath her coat and up her skirt. When she brought her hand out the keys were not in it. Both Daryl Harper and the security guard both leap back, palms in the air.

"Whoa! Whoa whoa whoa!"

"Whoa now, just hold on there ma'am! Just - just hold on now, you crazy-"

She drew her knees up to her chest, threw her arms around them, and sobbed.

"Daryl…Daryl what do we do now?" the security guard asked. "Did she actually just do that? We can't - I mean we can't go digging around in there."

"Of course we can't!" Daryl snapped. "I just want to know what the hell some crying rich lady who doesn't speak any English is doing with a chicken truck on the train tracks in the middle of southwest nowhere at three in the damn morning!"

And that, Mordecai Heller knew as he quietly prepared to undo the linkage between the two cars of his choosing, was exactly what they  _would_  wonder.

**000**

It began to snow as the boat pulled in. It seemed like ages until the Russian party finally descended onto the dock and she stepped onto the ramp. She wore a slim black coat with big fur cuffs and a high fur collar, and a black furry hat that came low over her face. Her shining black boots clicked pleasantly as she descended the ramp along with her party. The boat's bright lights made her a shadow. He could not see her face. He tried to rest in the relief of this as long as he could. He could pretend for a few remaining seconds that this was not Innochka, that he didn't have to grow increasingly concerned about the hollow electric bubble growing in his chest and what would happen to it when he met her eyes.

They both had to make interminable rounds, everyone greeting everyone in a proper and businesslike manner. It would not do for the two of them to run directly to one another. He shook way more hands than he wanted before a tiny black-gloved one slid into his, and then there was vanilla in the dry air and he looked down into her face, a pale moon with wispy black bangs and steel gray stars for eyes. He felt his breath catch in his throat, felt something like panic begin to rise within, but then she gave him the slight smile, the slow blink. He returned it, and when he did he felt the hollow electric bubble begin to dissolve. It was as though if his face did that, it settled the rest of him.

"Hello," she whispered. The word formed a gentle ghost of condensation in the night air.

"Hi," he whispered back.

She reached up and took off her hat, then ran a quick hand through her hair and let it fall - but it only fell to her chin. She gave a brief shake of her head to loosen it and smiled up at him.

"You like?" she asked.

His eyes widened. "You -  _you cut it?_ "

She grinned.

Suddenly the dock fell out from beneath him, projecting him into a curious slow weightlessness. To his surprise and terror he felt something burst in his chest, as though someone had just leveled a shotgun point blank against his ribs and fired. It left him with an exquisite pain outside anything he'd ever conceived possible, a burning that could only be quelled if he could somehow find a way to consume her, to fit her entirely inside his mouth, to push her into the same physical space he occupied. He wanted to slide all of her atoms between all of his and lock them there.

"Yah," she said, tucking one side behind her ear. She briefly bit her lip. "You like?"

He nodded, certain he was having a stroke. She nodded back. He needed to use speech now but his chest was a steel cage with a burning bolt through it. The top of his head was on fire. He was absolutely and most certainly in the throes of a stroke, but he somehow gathered the wherewithal to gesture lamely to her newly shortened hair.

"Thank - thank you," he managed to choke.

She lifted her chin. "I did not do for you," she said haughtily. "Is easier in jungle. More professional."

But she smiled.

"Of course," Mordecai said, catching her joke. The utter destruction happening within him paused for a second at this sharing. A snowflake landed on her eyelash. She didn't notice. When she blinked it made her long bangs flutter slightly. Her newly short hair was no longer straight but had a wispy wildness to it that, when speckled with snow, made her look dreamlike and unreal. His eyes hurt looking at her. They stabbed like her face was an exquisite ice pick. The world twisted around her face.

"…Hi," he said again.

She smiled. "Hello!" Her incisors came to fat little points. He'd never noticed that before.

They were interrupted by a few Marigold lackeys with dollies, trailed by Asa Sweet. He smiled and puffed on his cigar as he made his way over to them. "Pleasure to see you again, dear," he said to Innochka, who smiled demurely. "Tell your bosses thank you for the unexpected gifts." He gestured to the lackeys who brought the dollies off the boat, now bearing boxes within which Mordecai could hear the telltale clinks of vodka bottles.

Innochka nodded. "You are very appreciated," she said. "We are glad to continue to partner with you."

Asa's eyes widened. "Well your English has certainly improved!"

She smiled. "Yes, thank you. I practice with Petrov," she said, gesturing to their translator.

Asa turned to Mordecai, rightfully expecting that he would be taking part in this conversation, but the realization that Innochka could now speak English effectively shaved off the top layer of Mordecai's brain. Just then someone from Innochka's party called her over. When she'd stepped away Asa leaned in to Mordecai. "You look like you've seen a damn ghost, son. You feeling all right?"

"She cut her hair," he said weakly.

"Did she? I didn't notice." He glanced askance at Mordecai. " _That's_  what's got you so wound up?"

"I - I don't know," Mordecai said. His chest hurt. His face hurt. He couldn't stop staring at her back as she spoke to Petrov. "Asa, the main symptoms of a stroke are loss of balance, trouble speaking, and facial spasms. Am I displaying any of those right now?"

"What?"

"Just tell me."

"Um. No. No stroke symptoms. I think maybe you're just …" and here Asa lowered his voice, " _happy_."

"That, uh…" Mordecai said, and put a hand to his chest. "Is that what that is?"

"Get a handle on it," Asa said. "There's work to do."

Mordecai snapped to attention. Straightened. "Yes. Right. Of course."

Asa nodded. "Good man."

**000**

Ten minutes later Innochka had lay down across the tracks, further confounding the security guard, who went to rouse the train's other guards. They came out to see the crazy lady, seven in number.

"My god, is that all of them?" Mordecai whispered to Possibly Philip, who had long been Actually Philip. "That's the train's entire security team."

"Looks like it. Should we - ?"

"I'm considering it," Mordecai whispered back. They sat in the shadows between two passenger cars, about two away from the scene with the chicken truck. Since he would have to remain with his back to the scene in order to unlink the needed cars he brought along a mirror, which Philip was there to hold up for him while he worked. Innochka shriek-sobbed in Russian about, from what little he could understand, chickens and her heart.

"She is really hamming it up out there," Actually Philip said.

"Good, she's supposed to. Hold the mirror still," Mordecai said. He narrowed his eyes. "We leave the guards."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes." The guards were all gathered together in one spot and would make easy work for a tommygun, but that spot happened to be in a cluster around Innochka. That amount of unexpected gunfire so close to her was too big of a risk and wasn't needed anyway. That she'd managed to draw the train's entire security team out to watch her only proved that she was, in fact, good at acting completely insane.

"You can cry on command, can you be out of your mind?" Mordecai asked. He was still reeling from seeing her, from smelling her, from that  _shotgun wound_ to the chest he'd taken back on the dock - but work was work and it was there to be done.

"Hmmm. I think so, yes," she said, and he watched her lips form every word so intently he had to remind himself to pay attention to what she was actually saying. At the present moment Innochka shrieked something about being left to be hit by the incoming train. She included the chickens in this equation. Something akin to 'leave us here to die,'  _us_ indicating both her and the chickens. He recognized the word for  _suicide_  and then  _agreement._ Apparently she'd decided she had a suicide pact with a truck full of poultry.

Mordecai blinked. It was odd, but he  _did_  ask for crazy.

"ETA?" he asked Philip.

"Five minutes."

"Is everyone in place?" Mordecai asked.

"No signal yet."

Mordecai made a dissatisfied sound. He glanced up at the mirror. Innochka was entirely blocked by the security guards but they looked suitably perplexed, and he could still hear her talk-sob-yelling at them. At least that part was going to plan. If the signal from the other half of the operation didn't come in under three minutes he would start getting very worried.

A minute and a half passed like molasses.

"Signal," Philip said.

Mordecai swiftly undid the linkage between the cars with all the speed, skill, and silence he'd honed over the previous month. "Other side," he said to Actually Philip, and they stepped from the car that would be moving to the car that would not. Now Mordecai faced the scene with the chicken truck. She was still yelling and the security guards still surrounded her.

"Check the time, Innochka," Mordecai muttered. "Wrap it up."

"No, no, no," Innochka moaned with shameless melodrama. "/ _The chickens are all he left me with!_ /"

"All right, this is ridiculous. Daryl, get back in there," one of the guards said. The conductor nodded and trotted back to the engine. "Look lady, either you're gonna move off these tracks or I'm gonna  _make you_  move, understand?" The guard said to her. "I got no compunction 'bout smackin' a broad what needs a smack, and I ain't ever seen one what needs a smack more than this one right now!"

"Ronald!"

"What? Broad needs to get ahold of herself!" He turned to Innochka. "Get up!" he shouted at her. "Get  _up,_ lady!"

She gave a fearful shriek.

"Go on, get up before I smack your damn face!"

Mordecai tensed. Suddenly there was a small smattering of applause, and he saw the door to the truck open. Innochka got in, closed the door behind her, and started the engine. He could see her face, mascara-stained and red-eyed, bottom lip quivering. Her bottom lip stopped quivering. She looked suddenly lucid. She looked at the guards as she let the truck roll off the tracks. The train engine gave a loud bellow and began moving forward towards the bridge. Good. Everything was going according to plan. Now they just -

The truck screeched and turned. Mordecai jumped. Innochka was screaming bloody murder, her forty five pressed to her temple.

"Jesus Christ she's got a gun!" a guard yelled.

"Oh my god, lady  _no_!"

"What the hell is she doing?" Actually Philip cried.

Mordecai could only watch, stunned. She swung the truck back onto the tracks so it faced the train and pressed on the gas. With a lurch she reversed backwards across the bridge with the gun held to her head. The seven security guards gave chase, trying to save Innochka from herself. The great black engine groaned and slowly began to move forward behind them, but it only pulled the first two cars with it. Mordecai watched as the cars advanced across the bridge, away from him, now acting as a plug that separated the front engine from the rest of the train. The front engine couldn't reverse, and the first thing Mordecai did that evening was cut the lines of communication between the front and rear engines. The Marigold fleet rolled up alongside the train. The men got out, handkerchiefs over their faces and tommyguns in hand.

"You two, cover the bridge," Mordecai ordered, just in case any of the guards got ideas about coming over single-file on the maintenance access. They threw Philip and Mordecai a shotgun each, but as Mordecai lifted a red handkerchief over his face he realized they probably wouldn't need them. Innochka had just lured the train's entire security team over the bridge and stranded them there, leaving the train defenseless.

He heard the wheels of the chicken truck screech away into the night, accompanied shortly thereafter by two gunshots into the air. She was safe. He released a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. Now he could concentrate fully on the task at hand. He pulled the handkerchief up over his mouth and cocked his shotgun, then put one hand on the door handle. Beneath the covering he smiled.

He was Billy the goddam Kid.

**000**

Having never conducted such a public robbery, Mordecai was surprised by how cooperative the victims were. That may have been because they didn't loot the civilians of their belongings. They searched the train for one agent traveling with a lot of luggage. They were unsure where on the train he would be, but Mordecai's best guess was in the sleeper cabins. Petrov, the Russian translator, knew the man's face and was already aboard the train waiting for Mordecai and Philip. They went from car to car that way, Mordecai leading the charge, Petrov in the middle, and two more men bringing up the rear, all armed. Upon entering each car Mordecai exhorted the passengers to please remain calm and no harm would come to them. Every time he did he felt a little more in character. It was enough to make him wish he'd worn a Stetson hat.

When they finally got to the sleeper cabins the occupants were understandably hesitant to open their doors, so they kicked them in. There was a lot of screaming and one couple quite in the middle of things - his gaze rested on them a touch longer than it might have strictly needed to - until they finally reached a man alone in a cabin full of suitcases and trunks. He was curled against the wall at the edge of the bed, eyes wide.

"This is him," Petrov said.

Mordecai shoved the barrel of the shotgun into the man's neck. He yelped and put up his hands."Take - take it," he stammered. "I was only hired to transport, not to die."

Mordecai glanced at Petrov. He nodded.

"Thank you for your cooperation," Mordecai said. The team opened the nearest door and motioned the rest of the crew in. They hurriedly picked up the cargo and just like that it was done. They fled the train, got into the cars, and sped off into the night. Mordecai ended up stacking two heavy suitcases on his lap. He had no idea what was in them but it felt like bricks. He sat in the back seat with Philip.

"Were there any casualities?" Mordecai asked the driver.

"Not a one," he replied. "I gotta hand it to ya, went off without a damn hitch."

"Indeed it did." Mordecai nodded, satisfied. He turned and looked out the back window at the train swiftly receding into the night. Merely stopped, not derailed, every passenger alive and the goods extracted with surgical precision. It was a heist worthy of Jesse James, if he did say so himself.

"You are glowing like a new mother," Philip said as he lit a cigarette.

Mordecai blinked. "I - I'm - you - well you're a  _homo,_  Philip," he replied. "My god, open a window."

They were headed to the rendezvous point, an abandoned lodge on the Mississippi about fifteen miles away, but after five they turned and went three miles down a dusty road alongside a ravine. A chicken crossed the road in front of them, illuminated platinum by the headlights. They smelled the smoke before they saw it, a long black column lifting up into the night, the glow of a fire. They pulled up before it. Innochka sat primly on the gas can, the chicken truck burning away in the ravine behind her, chickens charging confusedly through the snow. Her hat was upturned in her lap. She waved when she saw them and quickly dove into the front passenger seat. The driver made a quick u-turn and sped off back towards the main road.

Innochka turned and smiled at Mordecai. He blinked, dazzled.

"Hi," she said. She glanced at the suitcases and nodded. "Ah, went well!"

"It did, yes."

"Hmm. Good good." She smiled. She held up her hat, now heavy with something. "Eggs?" she offered.

**000**

The crew of the robbery milled about in the lodge smoking cigars and drinking vodka. When Mordecai and Innochka stepped in the door there was  _applause._  It startled Mordecai motionless. "Nostrovia!" the Russians cried, raising bottles of vodka. Asa was there, clapping. They were being handed drinks from every direction. Mordecai stood in place, stunned. He gingerly turned to Innochka, wide-eyed and bewildered. She was already looking up at him with something like concern - oh god, he was already messing this all up - but suddenly she slid her arm through his, smiled, and pulled him towards the center of the room.

"Thank you," she said to someone as she accepted a drink, and hearing that snapped Mordecai back to the present.

"Thank you," he said, and accepted a drink as well. He quickly raised it to his lips so he could take a swift look around from behind the rim of the glass, which felt safer somehow. Safer because he had entered into some impossible surreality that found him in a room full of people smiling at him and handing him things and telling him he did a great job, where he had an ineffably beautiful woman on his arm, where everyone was happy to see him.  _Him._  It was so extraordinary and foreign he couldn't enjoy it. He'd never liked attention from large groups of people and now he saw he disliked it even if it was positive attention. Too many eyes were too many eyes.

Innochka was listening to someone to her left, but as soon as he turned to her she turned to him. The person was still talking but Innochka smiled up at Mordecai, her attention on him as though she expected him to say something, but he had nothing to say. What he wanted to say was  _I need to get out of here_ but he suspected running screaming from the room would somewhat ruin the festivities.

Someone clapped him on the shoulders and shook him. "Look at you, man of the hour!" Asa said. "That went off without a single goddam stutter, Heller. I'm impressed. I am very very impressed. And this lady!" he said, gesturing to Innochka. "You, madam, are a piece of work. Did you -sweetheart, are you holdin' a bag of eggs?"

She nodded. "Chicken truck has eggs! Why go to waste?"

Asa gave a high, hooting laugh. "All that and the grocery shopping too!" He looked at Mordecai and jerked his head in Innochka's direction. "This one's a keeper."

Mordecai made a strained sound. He glanced around furtively. "I- I didn't realize there was going to be a party," he said.

"The Russians bring the party with them. They've been handing out vodka bottles like church pamphlets."

"I see that."

Innochka, distracted by a different conversation, partially unthreaded her arm from Mordecai's.

"I'd rather not stay here long," he said to Asa. "And I suspect Innochka would like to get back to the Marigold."

Asa's eyes widened "The  _Marigold?_ " He stepped close to Mordecai and whispered, "Kid, are you  _kidding_ me?"

"Uh…no?"

His jaw drooped. "Good  _god_. All right listen. Give her a ride, but there's a reason you need to stop at your place first," he said, quietly and urgently.

"There's a - what?"

" _Think of something,_ " he said. "Invite her up." Asa clapped him on the shoulder and strode off.

Mordecai startled. "Asa -" he began, but stopped himself, because he almost said  _what do you mean, invite her up?_  He hadn't even considered the possibility that she might end up in his apartment at some point, much less  _right now,_  but judging from Asa's reaction this was one of those things a normal man would have thought of. Suddenly the maw of his own ignorance gaped open before him like the Grand Canyon. Between that and the new experience of being the center of a room his tolerance for novel stimuli hit its limit.

"Innochka," he said.

She turned to him with her big gray eyes. Time hiccuped for a moment. "Yah?"

"I have to go - um - I have to make sure the goods are making it into the hearse," he said. "Wouldn't do to have things missing or broken. I'll, um - I'll be outside."

She studied him for a moment, then nodded.

"Thank you." He unraveled his arm from hers. She caught his hand on the way down and gave it a brief squeeze before releasing it. He glanced at her but she was talking to someone, so he made his way through the crowd, holding his breath through the praise and back slaps. He'd never been happier to be through a door and out into cold clean air.

He spent the next half hour helping two men best arrange the suitcases and trunks into the hearse to ensure they didn't jostle about. The three of them belabored the task almost pointedly. Mordecai began to suspect they'd selected this particular chore for much the same reason he did. But there was only so much belaboring that could be done and eventually the two of them drove off for the Marigold, where the goods would be securely stowed in the basement safe. This left Mordecai alone in the snow.

He had no desire whatsoever to go back into the lodge but he certainly wasn't going to just leave. He leaned against his car for a few minutes considering his options before reluctantly starting back towards the lodge, but just as he did the lodge door burst open and Innochka came storming out.

"Jesus Christ the  _bitch!_ " Mordecai heard Wes cry. He stumbled to the door holding his face, blood dripping down his chin. He made to follow her but Philip held him back.

"Leave it, Wes."

"/ _Fuck your mother's asshole!_ /" Innochka shot back over her shoulder in Russian, making some sort of sliding gesture by dragging the back of her hand up along the underside of her chin.

"Eh  _fuck off!_ " Wes barked.

"What did you do?" Mordecai barked back, stalking towards him. Wes cowered and didn't answer. "What did he do?" Mordecai asked Philip.

"Nothing, he's drunk and stupid." Philip turned Wes around and shoved him back into the lodge.

Mordecai turned to Innochka. She faced away from the lodge, her arms crossed, staring resolutely into the woods.

"What did he do?"

She shook her head. "Nothing. Is nothing. I want to forget this. Let's go."

"Let's - oh -  _let's_? You -you and I?"

She nodded. "You and I."

"Oh. Well. This - um- this is my car."

"Okay."

"Okay. Are you okay?"

She nodded. "I'm okay."

She paused, then smiled up at him, stood on her tiptoes, and touched her nose to his. " _Ochki,_ " she whispered, and wrinkled her nose as she said it. She left a hint of vanilla in her wake. She got into his car and to his bewilderment actually expected him to drive, and he somehow managed despite his newly wobbly bones and the bubbles that became of his brain.

**000**

Once she got into his car she wilted, so he was going to take her back to the Marigold where she had a room on the eighth floor along with the rest of her party. She likely wished to bathe and rest after such a long day, so that was where they were headed. This did not explain why he took a six block detour out of his way to drive past his apartment, nor did it explain why he stopped in front of it, nor why he found himself saying, "This is my place. Your - uh - I have your pistol if you'd like it back."

She smiled and yawned, covering her mouth with a dainty gloved hand. "Yes. I would like this."

"You're - um - you're welcome to come up," he said. He realized he'd never before said those words in reference to his own domicile. A bolt of panic shot through him. "Or - or if you're tired you can wait here and I'll bring it to you."

He watched her face, urging her to pick option number two, suddenly unsure why he'd even provided option one.

She pushed her bangs out of her eyes. "I come up."

"Okay. Okay," he said. He pulled the car around to the garage. His breath quickened. "I- I don't mean anything tawdry by inviting you up. Just - just so you - know. Just- I mean - we're just going up to get the- to get the gun. That's all. Or no, that's not very - there will also be tea," he decided. "If you're in my - my home - I should probably offer you - do you like tea?" He parked the car. "I have a few different kinds of tea. There's- there's green tea, and roobios, and black vanilla, and -"

She put her hand on his face, gently tilted it towards hers, and quickly kissed him. He took a quick, stuttering breath in surprise.

"I like tea," she said.

He blinked. Blinked again. "Yes, but- " Mordecai stammered, "What -what kind?"

"Any kind."

"Oh. Okay. You - that doesn't really narrow it down, though. There's still a very wide field of possibilities within those parameters."

She grinned. "Hmm, yes. We will solve this problem. We start by maybe getting out of car?"

"Right! Yes. Yes, that's - good idea. Out of the car," Mordecai said. He got out, then let her out. The walk through the lobby and trip up the elevator loomed before him. He felt like a settler gazing upon the Rocky Mountains with a mixture of fear and - and -

-he glanced down at Innochka as they got into the elevator -

-a desire to explore unknown terrain.

She looked up at him and smiled.

"You smile a lot," he whispered.

"I told you this," she whispered back.

"You - that's right, you did," he said. The elevator stopped on the 12th floor. Next stop his apartment. "I - um - I wasn't expecting company tonight. Excuse the mess." He took his keys from his coat pocket and tried to unlock the door, failing on the first attempt due to shaking hands. He heard Innochka yawn. He forced his hands steady and managed to open the door, and she was in his home.

"Mess?" she asked, looking around his hypoallergenic living room.

He quickly aligned some items on his workbench. "Yes, I - sorry. That's better." He straightened. Turned. Looked at her. There was a woman in his apartment. She stood there in his living room. Standing!

"Here," he said, gesturing to his armchair. "You - you sit there. Have a - have a seat. I'll make tea. What kind of tea? We never established what kind of tea. But you said any kind so - so Earl Grey. Earl Grey?" he asked with an edge of hysteria. "Earl Grey is really the best tea. Wait, before you sit let me take your coat. And your eggs."

She smiled, handed him the items, and sat down in the armchair. "Is nice, thank you," she said, and took off her shoes. He stared. He wasn't expecting her to take off her shoes in his apartment. Was that normal? It was probably normal, he didn't keep his shoes on in his own apartment for very long. Then again he usually kept his shoes on when he went to  _other people's_  apartments. Then again again the only other domicile he'd ever spent significant time in was Atlas's, where he had habitually removed his shoes, but since he'd lived with Atlas for a period perhaps that changed the rules somewhat.

He hung her coat and glanced back at her. She'd curled up in the armchair with her feet tucked under her, looking out the window. Were her feet bare? No, she had stockings on. He wasn't sure he could handle her bare feet on his armchair. He took the hat full of eggs -  _a hat full of eggs?_ -into his kitchen and went about making tea. Tea for the woman in his apartment. While it brewed he carefully took the eggs from her hat and placed them into a bowl, because if given the choice of a hat or a bowl a bowl was just a better place for eggs than a hat.

He arranged the tea on a tray with sugar and cream and spoons and perfectly folded napkins that lined up directly parallel with the edges of the tray. He aligned the tea and sugar in the center of the tray so neither of them would have to reach over the other, then lifted the whole thing and took it into the living room.

"Here we are- " he began, but her arm was draped oddly. She was slumped in the chair in a position that was - well, it was unflattering, to say the least.

"Innochka?" he asked. "I made tea. I made tea but you're asleep."

He stood there for a moment, unsure what to do. He put the tea down on the workbench then gently touched her shoulder.

"In - Innochka?" he asked.

Her eyes fluttered open. "Mm?"

"You're asleep."

"Oh!" she said, and straightened. "I am - sorry."

"Would you like me to take you back to the hotel?"

"Eh?" She tilted her head at him, perplexed, then shut her eyes and rubbed them with a closed fist, like Rose did when she was a baby. "I am sorry. I forget how to -" she yawned - "how to English." She shook her head, like she was trying to shake herself awake. It made her short hair flutter and she looked for a second like a little dark dandelion. She rubbed her eyes again and made of grumpy sort of sound.

"You're exhausted," he deduced.

She nodded. "I cannot sleep on boat. Rocking rocking. And tonight was big job."

"You did very well," he said. "Thank you for leading the guards away. Quick thinking like that is what makes you such a pleasure to work with."

She smiled and let her head fall to the side. "Thank you," she said softly.

"You're welcome." He swallowed. "Listen, why don't you go lie down in - in there," he said, gesturing to the bedroom. "I'll be fine out here."

She blinked tiredly. "You are sure?"

"I sleep in the armchair all the time," he lied. He helped her up from the chair and led her to the bedroom. They stopped at the doorway. He looked down at her. She looked up at him. His heart pounded. But then she did something curious - she stepped close to him and let her forehead rest briefly on his chest. She sighed, then stood on her tiptoes and pecked him on the corner of his mouth.

"Thank you Ochki," she said. "спокойной ночи."  _Good night._

"спокойной ночи," he repeated perfectly.

"Oh!" she said, sounding impressed. She yawned, squeezed his hand, and crept into his bedroom.

**000**

He'd never attempted to sleep in his armchair before, and the more he tried the more he saw why. When utilized with an ottoman it made a delightful seat for long periods of reading but sleep was a painful venture indeed. There was no sleepable position possible in this leathery hellchair, and he knew he couldn't sleep on a floor unless he'd been pistol whipped first. The further past the horizon the sun slipped the closer he came to the inevitable. He dragged himself up and padded softly to the bedroom. He peeked around the door.

He knew she was there but it didn't prepare him for the shock of seeing her in his bed. His gunmetal gray sheets draped over the curve and dip of her waist and hip. Her short hair fell away and exposed the nape of her neck. The entire room seemed to pulse around the gentle swelling of her breaths. He stared, and suddenly that gunshot from the dock re-opened and began to weep, a sucking chest wound he was desperate to stuff her inside. It was a surreal and impossible desire but he trembled in the grip of it. It frightened him. He padded backwards out of the room. God, but there was nowhere else to sleep.

 _Maybe I'll go check into the Marigold,_ he thought, but he could barely walk, much less drive. But what was he to do? What did he do about this? How could he possibly sleep with that - that  _creature_ next to him? It was impossible. An impossibility.

He took a deep breath. No. No no no. This was best approached as an engineering problem. This could be put down to logic in some fashion. What, at the root of it, was the problem here? The problem was she was in his bed and seeing her there seemed to cause his brain to hemorrhage. So, in order to stem the flow, the solution was simple:

He closed his eyes.

Blind, he stepped gingerly into his bedroom and crept around to the side of the bed she did not occupy. He lay down atop the covers and rolled so his back was to her. He crossed his arms and kept his eyes tightly shut. This seemed to help - he felt neither paralyzed nor panicked - but the sound of her breath was quickly becoming the loudest thing he'd ever heard, and it was making him ache.

He swallowed.

 _It's the ocean,_ he decided.

His mind struggled against this definition because it wasn't, it was  _her,_ his  _python,_ breathing sweetly here next to him in his very-

 _No,_ he insisted to himself.  _It's the ocean._ Her breath rolled in and out like the ocean at the beach. He hadn't seen the ocean since living back home. Long before his father fell ill his mother used to take himself and Esther on the train to the beach for the day. He still remembered that pale bright washed-out sunlight, remembered falling asleep on the blanket next to his mother with the waves still rocking his blood, and the warmth of everything, the baking sand, the laughing and seagulls and scent of vanilla, and Innochka's breath moving in and out like the ocean, until it b _ecame_  the ocean, warm and huge and everywhere and not worth fighting any longer. He let go and caught a soft sweet current into sleep.

**000**


End file.
